The Other Big Red Wins the Day  
 
The St. Paul's School Girls Varsity Tennis team traveled to Phillips Exeter Academy on Saturday, April 6, for the team's first match of the season after a week of practices cut short by rain, snow and power outages.
 
The format was best of three sets for singles and one pro set for doubles, all no-ad.
 
While Exeter took the day, the SPS team played its heart out with bountiful deuce games, two set tie breaks and a match tie break; altogether, SPS kept Exeter on its toes for more than 4.5 hours.
 
In doubles play, all three lines posted scores of 4-8: Liz Harder '25 and Poppy Duggal '25 at number one; co-captain Helen Berger '24 and Skylar Christoffersen '24 at number two; and Char Machiels '25 and Lidia Zur Muhlen '24 at number three.  Harder dug deep at number one singles to bring her first set to 4-6, then found another gear to take the second set in a tie break, 7-6. The match came down to a super tiebreak that slipped away by just a few points.  At number two, Berger came close to splitting sets but succumbed 1-6, 5-7.
 
Duggal, at number three, left it all on the court after a battle that culminated in a second-set tiebreak that went to Exeter, 3-6, 6-7.
 
Co-captain Sophia Burdge '24 at number four turned in scores of 1-6, 3-6 and Tattie Gibbs '24 at number six posted 2-6, 3-6.
 
At the end of the competition, Christoffersen played a gallant match in the number five spot that seemed within reach, but the hoped-for set split stayed elusive; the match ended at 4-6, 5-7.
 
In exhibition play, Rhys Rountree '25 played singles while Emery Gay '26 and Logan Bensadoun '25 played doubles; all posted 4-8 scores.
 
The win went to Exeter, 9-0.