The Grapevine and Colleyville Heritage tennis teams both finished in the top four in district last fall, and coaches Angel Martinez and Jeff Matlock say they have high hopes for 2008.
The Mustangs tennis team lost one of its top players from the 2007 squad in Alex Hanno, but Martinez said he still believes his team has plenty of firepower.
"I think it looks very promising," Martinez said. "We lost one senior boy, and that was it. Everybody else is coming back. Based on that, things look pretty good, but you never know."
Martinez said the goals for the coming season are to advance to the regional tournament and win a district title.
Grapevine won the district tournament in 2007, and Martinez said he expects a number of players to have strong seasons.
"Haley [Holt] went to state last year, and she is coming back," Martinez said. "We have a regional qualifier in Charlie [Sauer] returning, but I think as a whole, we should have a really good year."
Colleyville Heritage finished fourth in district in the fall season last year, and Matlock said he believes his team can do even better than that in 2008.
"We’re real excited about it," Matlock said. "Losing Southlake may kind of open things up for us a little bit. We’ve still got a pretty decent boys team, even though we lost a couple of seniors ... and we’ve added some freshman girls that could rise to the top of our lineup. Our girls are much improved, so we are ready to battle, and hopefully, we can battle for first or second in district."
Matlock said his goals for the coming season are two-fold, and said he believes he has enough depth on both teams to accomplish his objectives
"We definitely want to make regionals," Matlock said. "We would love to win district this year, but we definitely want to get to regionals this year by finishing first or second. We’re going to be losing a lot of boys this year, so that’s what we’re aiming at, and we’re really going to try to make a good push here."
Matlock said some of his key returners from last year’s team include Trey Campbell, Alejandro Oropeza, Justin McClellan, Sowmya Sunkara and Melissa Hodges.