Boys tennis falls to TJ, Yokopenic picks up win

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Photo via Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons license.

Baldwin’s boys tennis team plays in the spring sports season.

Hailey Dietz and Evelyn Esek

The Baldwin boys tennis team lost 4-1 against Thomas Jefferson on Wednesday. 

Though the team lost overall, senior Braden Yokopenic won his matches 6-0 and 6-1. 

“I played consistently and corrected errors I would usually make,” Yokopenic said. 

He feels that the team has advanced in a lot in different aspects of the game, especially with serving. He still sees the need for improvement in matches, though. 

“We need to work on our consistency,” he said. “We are making too many preventable errors.”

Freshman Hayden Swanson lost both of his matches 6-2, but also felt he and the team had good serves throughout their matches.

“Our team did really well in serves all together,” Swanson said.

The Baldwin players’ offense struggled, Yokopenic said, because the Thomas Jefferson players did well at taking the net and not allowing Baldwin to earn points.

Yokopenic praised senior David Werner on his match and his growth as a player. 

“He has improved every aspect of his game since the beginning of the season,” Yokopenic said. 

Swanson thinks that his first season playing high school tennis has gone really well so far.

“My first season has been really positive,” Swanson said, noting that he has become close with many of his teammates. 

Yokopenic also said that as a team, the players have improved greatly, but still have work to do. 

“We have started slow but we will be able to produce better match scores later in the season when the team gets more comfortable with their roles,” Yokopenic said.