Marble Falls tennis edges Burnet, hosts rematch in district tourney

CAPTION: Marble Falls’ CollinThe Marble Falls High School team tennis squad defeated Burnet 10-9 Sept. 21 to earn the second seed in the District 19-4A tournament.

That means the two teams will meet again at 4 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 21, at the Charlie and Nancy Herrington Tennis Center on the Marble Falls campus.

The overall team win happened because of Marble Falls’ Collin Schiling, who needed a super tiebreaker to decide the winner.

“All eyes were on that match,” Marble Falls head coach Samuel Whitley said. “Collin lost the first set. He changed his method. His style of play was not working. He was frustrated after the first set. He made more mistakes than his opponent did. You’re trying to hit winning shots. You let him make the mistakes. Collin did that; he adjusted his game to what he needed to do to win. His opponent hit the ball out.”

Whitley expected the matches to be close, and they were.

“Four matches remained, three matches went into super tiebreakers in the third set,” he said. “Our boys swept their matches and their girls swept their matches.”

Because of numbers, Burnet forfeited the mixed doubles match, which gave Marble Falls a 1-0 lead before the players took the courts.

“We started out hot,” Whitley said. “Our boys swept their boys. We had nine wins and they had three (Lady Dawg wins) at that time. The boys finished before the girls finished.”

And though the Lady Dawgs won all the matches, Whitley noted the Lady Mustangs played better in 2023 than last year.

“We had two girls matches that went to super tiebreakers,” he said. “We had two girls who were extremely competitive – Chloe Taylor and Chloe Brown. The last time we played Burnet last year in girls doubles and singles, my girls won a total of 14 games. This year, my girls won 35 games.”

Each week, the Mustangs and Lady Mustangs compete for spots on the tennis ladder where they are seeded Nos. 1-6. Whitley said the matches are very competitive and there’s not much separation between the player seeded No. 3 and the player seeded No. 6. Because they’re used to competing for spots throughout the week, the Mustangs and Lady Mustangs take that mentality into the district matches.

“There’s not a lot of separation,” he said.

RESULTS

Boys

Singles

Cooper Womack won 6-3, 6-0; Weston York won 6-0, 6-0; Hayden Gasaway won 6-1, 6-1; Collin Schilling won 6-2, 4-6, 11-9; Cooper Kelley won 6-3, 6-1; Payton Glaser won 6-0, 6-0.

Doubles

Womack and York won 6-3, 6-0; Schilling and Stence won 2-6, 6-4, 10-4; N. Smith and S. Smith won 6-2, 6-1

Girls

Singles

Sophie Trudeau lost 0-6, 0-6; Nevaeh Nelson (Montoya) lost 3-6, 1-6; Chloe Brown lost 3-6, 6-2, 10-12; Elin Gosselink lost 1-6, 4-6; Mia Hernandez lost 3-6, 3-6; Chloe Taylor lost 3-6, 6-4, 1-10

Doubles

Gosselink and Brown lost 6-6 (4-7), 2-6; Trudeau and Hernandez lost 1-6, 1-6; Taylor and Morales lost 5-7, 1-6