On Saturday, the girls varsity tennis team traveled to Portage to compete in a tri, facing Portage Central and Birmingham Seaholm. Forest Hills Northern was also there, but FHC did not face them. The Rangers finished third out of the four teams, edging out Portage with a score of 5.

The Rangers started the day against a tough Seaholm team. The score ended up being 9-0 in favor of Seaholm, but the Rangers put up a fight in a few matches. One of these was 2 doubles, consisting of junior Isabella Notarnicola and senior Emily Benson. These two forced their opponent to win 7-5 in the first set. Another flight that pushed Seaholm was junior Andrea Wang at 3 singles and sophomore Emily Johnson at 4 singles. Each of them won a total of 5 games in the 2 sets.

After the loss to Seaholm, the Rangers stepped up big as a whole, defeating Portage 5-4. A big difference in these matches was the third set ten-point tiebreak. There were 3 of these, and the Rangers won in 2 of them, which ended up being the deciding factor between third and fourth place overall. These 2 matches were 1 doubles, consisting of seniors Katie McClure and Lyndsay Werkema, 4 doubles, consisting of sophomores Mina Siebert and Olivia Hooper, and juniors Jenny Baer and Annabel Vermeulen at 5 doubles. While 4 doubles eventually lost this tight match, the other two ten-point tiebreakers swayed the Rangers’ way. The 4 doubles match loss hurt, especially because Olivia and Mina had won the first set; however, they lost the second set in the seven-point tiebreak 14-12, dropping the match. Besides 1 doubles and 5 doubles winning, 3 and 4 singles pulled out wins along with 3 doubles in a tightly contested match 7-5, 6-4.

The Rangers pulled off wins in some pressure matches against Portage; these matches will be useful coming up against Okemos and others on Monday in another tri and later on in the season.