Senior Rory Milan. Photos taken by Ailin Toro.
This boys tennis season has been tight for Malden High School. They had a rough start at their first match but have been working hard since to get back to the top.
The boys started off the season with confidence in becoming Greater Boston League Champions and with the hopes of getting to the second round at playoffs, something that has not happened for the boys tennis team in the past. The team worked hard this season, practicing every weekday as long as they did not have a game.
The boys were “a very close-knit community” according to co-captain Edward Gu. They like to joke around with each other before the games. This does not exclude the coach who also has a very good relationship with the players. Co-captain Tri Pham even describes her saying he feels like “she is like [his] second mother”.
Since the team is mainly made up of seniors and coach Julie Briggs is going to lose almost the entire varsity team. Briggs feels sad to see the players all go since “they’ve become a family” throughout the years they’ve been together. Briggs “[wishes] them well and [wants] the best for all of them”. She says that they are all going to fabulous schools and is going to miss them a lot.
At the beginning of the season Pham had said that “this season [was] going to be a tough one from looking at the teams [they had] to play [although] he still had high hopes for [the team] and really [believed they could] do very well in the end.“ On Monday, the 23rd, Briggs was nervous going into the last two games. She felt that the team had to go in at their best and give it their all. They had lost their match the Wednesday before against Somerville and was not sure what the outcome would be at their final game Thursday, May 26th.
Going into the last match the score was 7-8 with 8 losses. The team becoming GBL champions and finding out if they qualified for states was all riding on the last game. The last game ended up with them finding out that they did not qualify or make it to states with the loss to Somerville.
