Winter sports are coming to an end, although the weather says otherwise, and Horizon’s athletes have begun to prepare for the 2019 spring season. Tennis players, among many, have been training during their long off-season and are ready to dominate this year.

“I started [tennis] when I was about five or six, so I’ve been playing for about 10-12 years now,” Kyra Ellison, senior, said. “I didn’t play very seriously until high school started. Once I got into playing on a high school team, I became more involved.”

Each new season brings in more student athletes. Although most are returning athletes, if you want to try something new, now is the perfect time to join.

“It sounds like we have more girls that are going to play on our team this year, so I think we are going to have a pretty large team. We have a lot of girls who are looking forward to improving their game and possibly play varsity. It’s going to be a really good season,” Ellison says.

Tennis requires a lot of conditioning and coordination. Their tournaments are set up into singles and doubles. The girls have to put in a lot of effort in between seasons to keep up with conditioning and enhancing their skills.

“I’ve been playing tennis about three times a week, I like to go out and play [matches] with my dad sometimes,” Ellison remarked.

A lot of students go out and take lessons to receive more help on how to improve.

“I do lessons as well. I play at the ranch country club. I like to go to practice to stay in shape so I can play better during the season. I’m thinking about playing singles for our team and possibly one doubles. The top three players at our school get to play singles. Then the next eight [players] down get to play doubles for varsity. Personally, I’m just really looking forward to improving my game and have a good season,” Ellison said.

Although a lot of tennis is individual, there is still teamwork required in the mixture.

“As a team, I’m hoping that we can build the sense of a team and friendship. Also to just have fun playing tennis together and make those bonds and connections in order to prove ourselves to each other through the game. It’s also important to build that bridge between skill level, because we struggled with that last year. We just need to get the sense of being a big team, but also just a group of good friends,” Ellison states.