Several high school sports wouldn’t even be an option for area student-athletes, were it not for a rule that allows for schools to team up if they don’t have enough numbers to support a particular program on their own.
Among them for Roaring Fork and Basalt high schools, and in some cases Glenwood Springs High and Colorado Rocky Mountain School (CRMS), are softball, cross country, wrestling, lacrosse, golf and tennis.
The boys tennis program, based at Basalt High School but including athletes from Basalt, Roaring Fork, CRMS and Glenwood, has benefitted greatly from that arrangement in recent years.
This season, the team is made up of 13 players, including 11 on varsity and two junior varsity players who are new to the sport, first-year head coach Shelley Lundh Freeman said.
Roaring Fork junior Hank Bielenberg has been playing tennis for about eight years, and said the opportunity to play on a high school team, even if it’s not for his own school, has improved his game.
“It’s been fun, and it’s cool to be with all these other guys,” Bielenberg said just before his singles match against an Aspen opponent at the Crown Mountain Park tennis courts on Sept. 3.
“It just makes for a bigger community around high school tennis, and you get to meet and play a lot of different guys from throughout the Valley.”
Bielenberg said he likes tennis compared to other sports for its technical aspect.
“It’s harder than some other sports in that sense, but there’s definitely a lot of exertion and you have to be a good athlete,” he said.
AJ Lott is a senior at Glenwood Springs High, which fields its own girls tennis team but doesn’t have a boys team. So the combined Basalt team was his opportunity to play a sport he’s come to love since taking summer lessons at the Glenwood Springs Community Center before he went into high school.
“I just love that you’re staying active, first and foremost,” he said. “But you also need a lot more patience than you’d think to play tennis. It’s really easy to get frustrated in this sport, and you still get angry. But it teaches you to come down, you know, zen.”
Fritz Simmons is a senior at CRMS, a private prep school in Carbondale.
“We’re not a ball sports school,” he said. “We’re more kayaking, climbing, skiing … but my mom played tennis when I was younger, and I always looked up to her and went to tennis camps in the summer.
“So, tennis is great for me, and it’s nice to interact with other schools,” said the Carbondale native.
Lundh Freeman started coaching the Basalt girls team two years ago, and became the assistant boys coach last year before taking on the head coaching duties. Both Basalt teams have combined players from other Valley schools since their inception, she said.
It simply means they have enough players to field a team, Lundh Freeman said.
“Unfortunately, it’s not a sport that’s promoted in middle school or younger,” she said. “So the kids, by the time they get to high school, are already looking at soccer, volleyball, lacrosse, baseball, all these other sports, and they don’t think of tennis.”
In an effort to grow the numbers, she and her husband, Howard Freeman, who is the assistant coach for the Basalt boys team, recently started a summer tennis program for middle schoolers. “Hopefully we can get younger people interested, so by the time they reach high school, they’ll think of tennis,” she said.
The team has improved this season, thus far earning two full team wins and garnering several wins in individual and doubles match play.
Basalt lost 4-3 to Aspen last week, but Bielenberg, Lott and Simmons all won their singles matches and Lott teamed up with sophomore Tyler Portman to win their doubles match.
The team was set to host Fruita Monument on Wednesday, and will also host Steamboat Springs on Sept. 19 and Durango on Sept. 20. All games are played at the Crown Mountain courts.
In other action…
Boys soccer
Roaring Fork 3, Basalt 1 (Goals from sr. Salbador Vasquez, and jrs. Cal Stone and Wesley Serrano). Record: 1-1. Next: @ home vs. Rifle, Thursday, Sept. 11, 6pm.
Girls volleyball
Roaring Fork 3, Basalt 2 (17-25, 23-25, 25-17, 25-23, 15-10). Kills: sr. Nikki Tardif, 13, sr. Yaki Nunez Hernandez, 11, sr. Elleree Richmond, nine; Blocks: so. Clover Hansen, four, Tardif, jr. Hazel Jenkins and jr. Tess Hayes, three each; Digs: jr. Liz Revilla, 12. Record: 2-6, 1-1 3A Western Slope League. Next: @ Grand Junction, Thursday, Sept. 11, 6:30pm.
Girls softball
Double header: Basalt 22, Meeker 15; Meeker 18, Basalt 8. Next: @ home vs. Montezuma-Cortez, Saturday, Sept. 13, 11am and 1pm.
Cross country
Basalt at Eagle Valley Invitational. Top male: sr. Towler Scott, eighth; Top female: fr. Scarlett Jones, 30th.
Mountain biking
Roaring Fork at Eagle Haymaker Classic. Top male: sr. Quinn Carpenter, fourth; Top female: sr. Emmaline Warner, 11th.