On Friday, February 25, the COS women’s tennis team took their first loss against Modesto Junior College in their first home match in over a week. This was their fourth conference match, and they are now 3-1 in conference.

This was the second time COS had played against Modesto, with the first time being in the Modesto Junior College Invitational, where they were able to have a bit of a look at their future opponents. In the end, though, a look doesn’t give the full picture.

“We were prepared, [but] we didn’t do everything we needed to do to beat a team like that … there were just a few things that we missed, like a lot of easy shots at the beginning that set us back,” said Head Coach Chad Borkey.

Namely, those easy shots came in the doubles matches for COS. In losing two of their three doubles, they were down going into the singles, which is not a great position to be in to win the match.

Even though the Giants lost their number one doubles match, it did come with a bit of a benefit. Elizabeth Gormley, who lost her doubles match and who holds the current number one spot for singles, was able to see the opponent who she would face in her match later in the day.

“So obviously I played her in my doubles match earlier on, and I had also played her at a tournament before, so I came in knowing her game-style and knowing what strategy I was going to use,” Gormley stated.

Gormley would go on to win in a decisive 2-0 against that opponent, being the first singles match of the day to finish.

Unfortunately for COS as a whole, this match was a hard loss to take. In losing 4-5 to Modesto, they also were put down into second place in the Big 8 southern conference. Even though a loss with an impact such as this is always impactful to a program, there can always be an upside, as the head coach would go on to elaborate.

“I think all the girls fought to the end, and that is something that I’m proud of, you know one thing I want them to do is complete to the very end no matter what the score is, and all of them did that today. That was one thing I was very proud of.”

Borkey continued with, “We’ll get better from this, we’ll move on and we have another one, one more time at their place, and we’ll see what happens.”

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