Girls’ tennis season just ended with two seniors making yet another trip to the State finals! Olivia Reynolds and Theresa Bartelme have done something that is rare and extremely difficult to do in Illinois high school sports. Both seniors have advanced to State all 4 years! Theresa reached a special milestone during this year of 100 career wins at Richwoods! Olivia reached 100 wins last year, so both girls have been dominant during their high school careers to say the least.
Some highlights from the year include Richwoods winning record this season at 7-5 playing matches in Chicago Suburbs, Moline, and Edwardsville covering a huge part of the state. This was the 5th season straight RHS tennis had qualified entries for State. Theresa Bartelme went undefeated in 2 singles winning conference and put together a 46-6 record with 2 losses coming to top 16 teams in 2A state. Olivia Reynolds won her 3rd sectional title and Theresa Bartelme won her 2nd sectional title. The roster also had two first year players, Addison Sharpe and Leah Shaffer, making the Varsity Sectional line up. They won their first round of sectional over Normal West’s #1 doubles entry with their 1,2 players before losing to Moline’s #1 doubles entry.
The coaching staff has been doing an excellent job led by head coach Terry Cole with the help of Mr. Partington and Ms. Schmitt as assistant coaches. Ms. Schmitt and Mr. Partington are two fresh faces around the Castle. Ms. Schmitt joined the Richwoods faculty last year while this year is Mr. Partington’s first year. Ms. Schmitt was never a tennis player when she was growing up, but she got involved with the tennis community in Arizona and coached at the school where she was teaching. Ms. Schmitt started playing tennis when she met Mr. Partington, played on the club team in college, and quickly “fell in love with the game of tennis.”
When Ms. Schmitt came to Richwoods, “tennis presented itself as something that could be really interesting” and she had heard about the success that Richwoods has had over the years. Ms. Schmitt says that her favorite thing about coaching tennis at Richwoods is the players’ attitude because “We have players that are willing to put in effort and put in work even if they haven’t been playing for the longest time. They are out there working hard, serving after hours and before school putting work in to make sure that they are doing well.” Tennis is making a comeback, and you can see it if you look at the number of girls on our team. “On varsity we have about 12 girls and on JV we have 20. It’s one of the biggest teams we’ve had since Mr. Cole started teaching.” says Ms. Schmitt. For anyone who wants to join the team, Ms. Schmitt recommends to “Start playing now, go out with your friends, play as much as you can, work with other people, ask questions, and watch professional tennis.”
https://richwoodsathletics.org/richwoodsknights/athletics/tennis/g/all.
