Sherwood Tennis

These are our best guesses for the season.  
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2025 is going to be an interesting season.  We had 7 seniors graduate, including 5 players who qualified for state.  That is a lot of firepower to lose.  But that also means there are some great opportunities for top spots for those who played lower in the lineup in 2024.  We had a similar situation in 2023 and a group of sophomores stepped up big time to do way more than just fill the vacant spots.  They killed it that year and are still going strong (but we also lose them after this season, so everyone needs to be ready to work hard for 2026 as well).

Who is going to fill those gaps and will they be able to replicate the same level of success?  As always, we have no idea.  From year to year, it's really about who wants it the most and works for it.  We expect a large tryout group for varsity this year with seniors all the way down to freshmen.  So, if you want one of those spots, be ready on March 3rd.
 

For our league, Sherwood is definitely going to see the biggest impact of graduating seniors.  So, we should expect most matches to be more competitive this season.  Some highlights to expect from around the league this season:

• Just like always, it looks like the team competition is going to come down to Sherwood vs McMinnville.  MAC's singles line-up was the toughest in the conference last year, and all 4 players return. We will have some battles in singles (Vicky was 2-2 against MAC at #1 last year), but we are probably going to need some dominant doubles play to retain our league title.

• I don't expect too many other full teams to challenge either MAC or Sherwood, but there are some tough players out there who will make earning a spot at the state tournament tough.  Addie (Century), Novalee and Cambria (Newberg) were all impressive throughout 2024 and at the district tournament.  We also saw some strong pairings come together for the district tournament last year (Alexa/Lydie from MAC, Matea and Lyla from FG).  I'd expect something similar this year with 3 of 4 state singles qualifiers returning and some good players who just missed out.  We also some younger doubles players from other schools who were starting to catch people off-guard last year, so we'll see what they can do this year.

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​We ended up with a record of 17-1 last year.  With 7 graduates, that will be tough to match.  Our continued success is also starting to draw the attention of other top teams around the state, so we may end up with some tougher non-league matches this year.  And, win or lose, that is awesome.  You get better when you play against better competition, so we'll gladly add those teams to our schedule.​

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For our JV and JV2 teams, we expect strong performances as well.  Last year, I thought our JV team would struggle more than the previous years.  I was wrong.  They killed it.  And they'll be good again this year.

 

For our JV2 team, we are hoping to see lots of new faces ready to learn how to play tennis.  While it's great when the JV2 team wins, it's really more about learning the game and hopefully learning to love it.

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