Mavs girls and boys finish second and third at districts
May 21—MOSES LAKE — The Moses Lake Mavericks boys and girls tennis teams finished their season at the district tournament over the weekend. The boys team tied with Davis for third in the rankings while the girls team finished second overall.
"We did have a lot of really good tennis played on Thursday," said coach Jay Dickinson. "The fact that our two singles boys, Cesar Portillo and Caleb Stanberry, came up one match short but played some of their best tennis of the year was really fun to watch."
The girls had brought Elise Miles, Madi McDonald and Belize Orton for singles and Kiley Thomas and Kalei Bruce, Claire Thompson and Abbie O'Neil, and Selah Loomis and Kamaile Bruce to play for doubles.
The boys singles players were Colin Stanberry and Cesar Portillo with the doubles teams consisting of Caleb Dickinson and Emitt Madsen and Sam Molitor and Carsen Owens.
By the end of the first day of the tournament, the Mavs had all of their players bumped into the consolation bracket. Girls doubles teams, Thomas and Bruce, and boys doubles team, Caleb Dickinson and Madsen, both made it to the semifinals before going into consolation.
In the consolation bracket, three doubles teams and one singles player made it into the quarterfinals, allowing them to play on day two of the tournament. The three doubles teams that made the quarterfinals were Caleb Dickinson and Madsen from the boys with Thomas and Bruce and Thompson and O'Neil from the girls and Miles being the final singles player.
"Basically, you can get all the way to second place if you keep winning and, of course, the top two go to state," said Dickinson.
Caleb Dickinson and Madsen were placed into the consolation bracket after falling 1-6, 2-6 to West Valley's Pete Kegley and Dashie DeMill, who would go on to win the championship. In the quarterfinals, Dickinson and Madsen lost 4-6, 3-6 to Raul Meza and Matthew Bethel from Davis; Meza and Davis moved on to earn second place at the tournament.
Miles went into the consolation bracket after playing Ike's Ema Stephens in the quarterfinals and falling 0-6, 1-6. In consolation, she would have to face off against her own teammate, Orton, in a match that ended 3-6, 6-2, 10-3 before moving on to play West Valley's Avery Rivera in a match that ended 6-2, 6-0. Her final match in the quarterfinals against Clara Shattuck from Wenatchee ended 3-6, 1-6.
Thomas and Bruce had to face Thompson and O'Neil in the quarterfinals of the consolation bracket. Thomas and Bruce would go on to win that match 6-4, 6-4.
"We were guaranteed to move someone on," said Dickinson.
The duo would go on to fall to Eastmont's Olivia Erwin and Sarahi Morelo in the semifinals, placing them in fourth overall at the girls doubles tournament. Thompson and O'Neil would place fifth for girls doubles with Elise Miles placing fifth for girls singles and C. Dickinson and Madsen tying for fifth in boys doubles with Wenatchee's Liam White and Luke Jeffery.
"The other fun thing was that all of our teams won at least one match," said Dickinson. "We represented pretty well, I thought."
Dickinson said he is pleased with the performance that the tennis teams put up this season and how much they have built up their confidence.
"We have such a great bunch of players who worked super hard, and I think they came a long way," he said.
He highlighted how much the girl's team had bonded throughout the season and how they accomplished taking the second-place spot in league play, which allowed them to have three extra spots in districts. This allowed almost the entire senior group of girls to attend the district tournament.
As the season closes, the Mavs tennis team will be graduating nine seniors on the girls side with the boys graduating five. With a typical lineup being 10 players, this adds a lot of space for bringing up players from the JV squad onto varsity next season.
"We were carrying 12 girls, so we have three girls coming back and we do have some pretty good tennis players on the JV, but it's going to be really hard to replace nine seniors who have been playing tennis for as long as those girls have," said Dickinson. "On our boys team we have five seniors and that as well is going to be a tough replacement because those boys really made themselves into excellent tennis players."
Dickinson said he is confident in the abilities of the team's returning players next year to both play hard and act as leaders for those being moved onto varsity.
