Although far from full strength at this early point in the season, the Superior Lady Cats tennis team swung into action with a pair of mixer matches last week, with Mission and Ronan in Mission Friday, and with Missoula schools Big Sky and Sentinel at Playfair Park in Missoula Saturday.

Coach Rick Berreth reports that his top two singles players – junior Josie Crabb and senior Peri Jasper – are currently on a trip in Europe and missed last week’s season-opening action, but that the players he did have showed good bounce-back capabilities from one day to the next last week. Mady Neu was vacationing with her parents, also making her unavailable last week.

On top of that, Crabb has been recovering from an injury that took her out of action at the end of the recently completed basketball season, where she was an All-State C performer in spite of the injury. Crabb is expected to be able to play when she returns.

In the meantime, Berreth and the players he does have available got on with the season last week. “On Friday, we played a mixer with Ronan and St. Ignatius,” Berreth said. “Due to spring break, we only had three players available.”

Berreth said freshmen Alyza Wickham and Kamryn Church fell 6-4, 6-4 to a top-tier Ronan team that nearly went to state at the Class A level last year, and in singles matches against Mission, Church won her match 6-2, 6-3, and Wickham won hers 8-1.

The Cats enjoyed a great day at the nets Saturday in Missoula, finishing an undefeated day 7-0 in matches played.

Church and Wickham won two doubles matches against Sentinel by the scores of 8-1 and 8-2. Playing singles, Church defeated her Big Sky opponent 8-2 while Wickham downed her Eagle foe 8-1.

Berreth said Superior’s others doubles team of Lilly Capp and Camdyn Atkin “also performed exceptionally well,” winning all three of their matches 6-2, 8-2, and 8-3 Saturday.

Superior will continue season action hosting a mixer of their own Friday in Superior.