FAIRFIELD — In the final season of girls tennis for Fairfield Maharishi, Lawrence Eyre had flashbacks to his first season at the helm of the Pioneer boys tennis team.
"The first match we ever played in the history of the tennis program back in 1988, our boys team went to Albia," Eyre said. "We only six boys on the team at the time and one of the boys was sick, so we drove in and got out of the van with just five boys that could compete.
"We were down 0-2 before we even got out of the van."
With two of their seven players out on Friday with dealing with illness, the Maharishi girls team found themselves in the same predicament against Mount Pleasant having to forfeit the No. 6 singles and No. 3 doubles match. Like the Maharishi boys some 37 years earlier, the Maharishi girls were able to fight back and pull out a 5-4 win edging the Panthers in the final match of the dual.
"In an odd way, it was kind of a nice symmetry to book end what might be the first and last seasons of tennis for our program," Eyre said. "The girls did the same things those boys did so many years ago. They were short-handed, but the came up strong."
Friday's win came on the heels of a 5-4 loss to open the season against Burlington-Notre Dame for the Pioneers in a dual on Tuesday that also came down to the final match. Carli Cline and Brenna Beggs edged Aparajita Kalra and Kathy Tang, 9-7, in the No. 2 doubles match.
Once again on Friday, the Pioneers would find themselves locked in a 4-4 tie with the No. 2 doubles match deciding the entire dual. This time, the first-time team of Karla and and Sohani Singh came together to pick up an 8-4 win over Hali Crane and Zoey Carlsen to give Maharishi the winning edge.
"Aparajita really had to step up her game and she did," Eyre said. "Sohani also really played well. She's a freshman who, up until this week, had never played a match. It was kind of fortunate. The team really buckled down instead of buckling under."
MSAE (1-1) heads to Albia on Monday to continue the final scheduled season of Pioneer tennis, ending nearly four decades of high-level play that has included multiple team and individual state championships over the years. With high school girls tennis moving to the fall starting with the upcoming school year, MSAE will enter into a sharing agreement with Fairfield after this season.
"I hope our young players will go on to contribute to the combined team with Fairfield next year," Eyre said. "It's a real delight to see that our girls are going out there and playing as well as they have. Even with just five players, they felt like they had a chance. It's nice to see that be rewarded."
