After winning 7-1 in their finals tournament, sophomore Andrew Waterman and junior Emma Davis won the tennis District 25-5A Mixed Doubles Division at the Varsity District Tournament April 7-8. The district competition lasted two days with 18 teams and 16 mixed doubles players competing.
Davis said, “I’ve been playing tennis since I was 5 years old and have been competing in tournaments since eighth grade. Playing tennis with Andrew is fun because we don’t get down easily. We keep high energy, and we’re more engaged and driven. We’re both competitive, so it was exciting when we won. I feel like our final match was good throughout. The highlight [of the tournament] was beating Liberty Hill twice because they are our rivals. We had already beaten them once before. I think if we had lost, we still would have won the layback if we had to.”
In the first round, the doubles team got a bye — an automatic advancement to the next match of a tournament. The team then played three other matches, including the finals match which they won.
Waterman said, “It felt like any other tournament. In our final round we just played strategically. We’re pretty mentally strong together, and we’re always in it. We’re always trying to fight back. I was anxious for the final match against Liberty Hill. We don’t like Liberty Hill. They’re evil. The biggest challenge was probably the 6-foot-8-inch player. He’s got a big wingspan, and we tried to avoid the guy. Next year, we will just try and learn how to play any kind of level. I’m ready though. ‘Ready’ is my middle name.”
The first day was from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. The next day the pair played their final match at approximately 10:30 a.m. and left Liberty Hill at 1 p.m. All costs to compete at districts were covered by the school. After district, the duo advanced to the Region 4 Tennis Tourney in Corpus Christi April 17-18.
Tennis coach Matt Kostoff said, “I was ecstatic when Emma and Andrew won because they had already beaten Liberty Hill once before and then they beat them again in the finals. They were pretty much in control of it the whole way. There were some times where they had to work a little harder. We have a real friction with Liberty Hill so it was nice to play them in the final and then beat them. It was a sweet victory. We’ve had a rivalry with Liberty Hill since 2021. They kind of took the place of Cedar Park for us. We’re going into a new classification next year, but our district is basically the same except we gained Vandegrift, Hutto and Eastview. We’ve already beaten Hutto and Eastview, but Vandy is Vandy. You can’t do anything about that, you know. We don’t have to beat them, we just have to beat everybody else.”
The players did not advance past Region.
