CARBONDALE (WSIL) -- Carbondale girls tennis won a sectional championship, and with no state tournament this year, WSIL Sports wanted to recognize the Terriers for their achievement.
The team joined WSIL sports live for the Tuesday 6 PM sports to celebrate their recent victory.
"What these eight girls accomplished over the last ten days, is just absolutely magnificent when you look back because all you have to do is look back nine days ago we lost to Herrin," Carbondale Tennis Coach Mike Butler said. "We were upset by Herrin, we thought we were better, we went to the seeding meeting, people thought we weren't as good as we knew we were so we were disrespected there so we decided we were going to take back what we thought was ours. That was the sectional championship. The credit in goes to the hard work that had to go in on those seven days and we lived tennis for seven days. Truly for seven days, and it paid off."
The Terriers backed their coach. Played with a chip and were in a championship state of mind. Shreya Patel and Jessie Harper delivered with a doubles title.
"I've been very grateful every step of the way," Patel said. "I went into the first day of sectionals just wanting to achieve my goal of qualifying for state even though there wasn't one and just after that was done, looking forward what can me and Jess do. We can take home the sectional title and that's what we did so I'm just happy that happened my senior year."
"If one of us was down, we'd be able to pick each other up and we'd both be good," Harper said. "Shreya was good hitting wide and I was good with finishing it and we were able to finish the point like that."
And then let's not forget Skylar Moore. Just 14 years old. She won the individual sectional title and did it as a three seed. Always appeared in control of her emotions. No fist pumps after a point.
"Well in my head I'll be like yeah, you know, I'll say yes in my head or something and sometimes I'll just hold my racket tighter whenever I win a point," Moore said. "I don't like to show it too much. I don't know why."
Sometimes a loss is exactly what a team needs. The loss to Herrin right before sectionals, woke up the Terriers.
"Yes it definitely did," Patel said. "Those seven days in between the Herrin match and sectionals, we were all super calm. We knew it was out last week here. We wanted to have a good time but put in as much work as we could and I'm glad it all paid off in the end at sectionals."
Coach Butler came up with a key strategy. He wrote key words on every players forearm. It worked.
"They were prepared going out there," Butler said. "They truly did not need coaching. They just needed extra emphasis from us to do the little things to win on the change over, so out there I wanted to remind them to believe in themselves. The two words that were on everybody was believe and in the middle was two things I wanted them to do. For my doubles teams, keep it low and wide. Be aggressive at the net and in the end, smile. Cherish this because what went through this year. This was a pandemic and we just managed to put together a crazy, beautiful weekend amidst some very trying times."
"It really did help because it didn't look like I was going to win but I knew I had those on my arm and it just helped me have the confidence and believe in myself and pull out a win," Moore said. "Especially in the first match."
