T-Birds show quick improvement

The Baraboo High School girls tennis team started its season off with duals against Onalaska and La Crosse Logan on Tuesday, followed by the Stevens Point Area Senior High invitational on Wednesday.

While the Thunderbirds were a bit shaky in the first contest of the season, the young team is already showing some positive signs.

BHS dropped both its Tuesday matches by 6-1 scores, then had a solid showing in the SPASH invite, going a combined 7-14 against some top-tier competition.

"(Wednesday) our goal was to get everybody at least one win, and we almost did that," BHS coach Karll Kruse said.

Several of the matches Baraboo lost at the invite were close enough to have gone either way.

"We could have probably won three or four more matches," Kruse said.

Lydia Greve led the way for Baraboo with a second-place finish in the tournament.

Greve defeated Kylie Mannion of Aquinas, 6-1, 6-0, in the first round, then beat Verona's Jenny Endres, 6-3, 6-4 in the second round to advance to the final of the No. 2 singles bracket.

A quick loss to Wausau West's Hillary Fanzen, 6-0, 6-1, in the final gave Greve second place.

Singles players Jessica Labeots (No. 1 singles), Katie Philabaum (No. 4 singles) both went 1-2 in the tournament, with Philabaum winning her first-round match and Labeots winning a match in the losers bracket.

In doubles play, the No. 1 team of Rachel Holtz and Mya Flentje won a first-round match, as did Hilary Bildsten and Kristen McReath at No. 2 doubles.

Bianca Martin and Danielle Vogel, playing No. 3 doubles, won a match in the losers bracket.

On Tuesday, the doubles team of Bildsten and McReath picked up the only wins for Baraboo, which was up against a couple of the top teams in the western part of the state.

Bildsten and McReath won their match against Onalaska's Amy Yin and Brittany Degen, 4-6, 7-5, 6-3 in the first match, then took on Logan's Haley Herndon and Kinyata Davis and came away with a 1-6, 6-3, (10-8) win.

Despite their strong start to the season, Kruse had already considered splitting the pair apart though.

"That makes it tougher to break them up," he said. "It might not seem logical to do that, but they're team players and they'll do whatever we need them to do.

"They're probably being the most competitive and doing the best out of what we've got. Maybe we can stretch our lineup out a little bit more by doing this."

The rest of the matches went to Baraboo's opponents.

Kruse thought his team was capable of making it a bit closer, but even with the big margin of victory, he saw that the T-Birds performed better as the day went on and were apparently feeling more comfortable in their new roles.

"It was a little disappointing that we didn't get to 5-2 or 4-3 against either of them," Kruse said. "I think against Logan, especially in second sets, everybody did better."