After a season of anticipation, the girls varsity tennis team placed third at one of their biggest tournaments. GAC’s was hosted by Holt High School on Sept. 24-26. They prepared and practiced hard for this conference championship, and it appears that their hard work paid off.

The team came home with many medals and titles. In doubles, junior Mackenzie Jones and senior Brynlee Hendricks got first place.

“A cool thing that happened was our number one singles player took out a Howell girl which was huge. It was really exciting because then the whole number one bracket had a huge chance. It was anyone’s game at that point because the house rules out. Then me and my partner Mackenzie Jones at number one doubles took out Howell in our championship match which was what got us the gold medal. It was really exciting,” Hendricks said.

During the tournament, there were some setbacks in the matches. Seniors Tori Ikeda and Caroline Schroeder had a really long match which almost led them to believe they were going to lose. In the end, the teammates came out with a second place title in doubles, beating Howell.

“It was a really hard-fought win. We went to our first set, went into a tiebreaker, and then our second set was extremely long. After that we had to go into another tiebreaker because we each won one. There’s even guys at the sidelines saying ‘That’s, that’s gonna go into the Guinness world records for the longest match I’ve ever seen.’ That was definitely the hardest thing,” Ikeda said.

GAC’s is a fun tournament for the team to compete in while also giving the girls a chance to support each other. At the tournament, the team was walking around playing music on a speaker and doing the ‘FHC Say What’ cheer for their team. Alyssa Smith believes that the positive energy her team carries around is what helps them win.