On the evening of Tuesday, April 28, the Wildcats faced the Blue Devils at home, resulting in a close victory at 5-2. This win rounds out their record at 2-2 in conference, with a bright future ahead.
Many of Libertyville’s top seniors were out of the game, including seniors Chethan Nickerson, Roshan Matthew and Gabe Decroes. Despite this setback, the Wildcats were able to find a win against the Blue Devils.
“We’ve played Warren quite a few times this year, and we’ve done very well,” Coach Dan Kiernan said. “It’s hard to keep the energy up with so many of our top guys out, but we were able to beat them.”
Because of these absences, some of the Libertyville players had to play a position for the first time, such as junior Joshua John, who played his first singles match and was able to win with a dominating two sets, ending with a score of 6-2 in both sets.
“It’s his first singles match, and he went out and won,” Coach Kiernan said. “It’s nice to see how versatile these guys are, being able to come out to play in any position and perform like this, because at the end of the day, we end up having to be flexible in a lot of these situations.”
Along with John, junior Chase Peirce put up a great performance against Warren with scores of 6-0 and 6-2 in his sets.
“It was definitely a bit of a challenge to go against his serve”, Pierce said. “Even though it was tough, I was still able to go out with a win. We work really hard in practice everyday, and I’m glad we were able to show that here tonight.”
Doubles team junior Charlie Sundberg and junior Ryan Santhosh Kumar also put up a dominating performance, ending the night with scores of 6-1 and 6-0 in both sets, respectively.
“It’s great to see all of our hard work in practice pay off,” Sundberg said. “I’ve been working on my T-serve a lot, and I saw that those results were able to be shown off tonight.”
The doubles team feels that the team can go far if they keep showing resilience in every game.
“It’s crazy how far this team has come,” Santhosh Kumar said. “We’ve always worked hard, and we know that we’re just going to keep growing as the season goes on.”
Libertyville will be facing off against Mundelein at home on Thursday, April 30. The Wildcats certainly have a bright future ahead, with their road to state coming up.
