OP_090116

44 | September 1, 2016 | The orland park prairie Sports
opprairie.com
Girls Tennis
Eagles hope returning skill can top uncertainty
Tim Carroll, Assistant Editor
The Sandburg girls tennis team poses for a photo before practice Aug. 25 at the Orland
Park high school. Tim Carroll/22nd Century Media
It is a fact of life in amateur
athletics: there will be
turnover from year to year.
Despite losing a great deal
of the veteran presence on
the Sandburg High School
girls tennis team between
this past season and the 2016
campaign, though, the Eagles
are confident that they
will be able to repeat the
successes they enjoyed this
past season.
In 2015, the team won
sectional and sent top singles
player Anna Loureiro —
then only a freshman — and
a doubles team to the Illinois
High School Association
state finals.
“We had a pretty good
season last year, I’d say,”
said Stephanie Garoufalis,
a senior and the returning
member of the doubles team
that qualified for state.
But it still will not be easy
for the team to replace all
of the talented players who
graduated.
“We had about nine seniors
last year, so it was definitely
hard to lose them,”
Garoufalis said. “We were
very close with them.”
Senior Jasmine Abunaim,
another senior doubles player,
added that none of this past
year’s doubles teams came
back whole for the 2016 season.
As a result, the girls will
have to get acquainted with
new partners quickly. And
there are plenty of players
who are new to the program
altogether, and will be asked
to step into big roles.
“This is the first time since
I’ve been at Sandburg that
I’ve brought up four freshman
to start off,” head coach
Brian Ostrander said.
Although they lost a big
chunk of this past year’s
team to graduation, the Eagles
will still have the leadership
they need from the
head coaching position. Ostrander
is back for his 17th
season of coaching tennis at
Sandburg.
In his time, Ostrander
has seen some very talented
teams and players come
through the school. But
things were a little different
in Loureiro’s first season.
“[Loureiro] really elevated
our team right away,” Ostrander
said. “To get a freshman
who’s our No. 1 player
right away makes everyone
fall into a better position for
us.
Ostrander said he thinks
that the experience players
got last year should put them
in a better position for the
coming season.
“We have some of the juniors
that were here last year
that got a taste of some higher
positions,” he said. “So,
if you look at it, this year is
really set up for maybe even
a better year than last year.”
Ostrander is not alone in
his lofty expectations for the
season, despite the relative
inexperience of the team.
“We have a very young
team,” Garoufalis said. “We
have a lot of freshmen and
sophomores coming up, so I
think carrying that forward,
kind of just to leave a legacy,
[we] probably look for that
conference title, look for that
sectional title and get more
state qualifiers.”
“I’m very optimistic for
sectionals,” Ostrander said.
“I don’t know if we’re going
to win the thing; all I know
is we’re going to be a tough
opponent.”
The conference championship
is likely to be a more
difficult test for the Eagles.
They have very difficult
opponents in Homewood-
Flossmoor and Lockport,
which are two of the main
reasons that Sandburg has
been unable to win the conference
in recent years.
The Eagles recently had
success against Homewood-
Flossmoor for the first time
in a long time.
“We used to lose to H-F
quite frequently, but last
year we beat them for the
first time in eight years,
which is pretty good,” Garoufalis
said.
It has been tough sledding
against Homewood-Flossmoor,
but matches against
Lockport have been backand-forth
in recent years.
“Lockport has been a little
up in the air,” Garoufalis
said. “We’re pretty evenly
matched with them, so it’s
always fun to play them and
see what the result will be.”
New class system to make
state qualification harder
Tim Carroll, Assistant Editor
After winning sectional
and sending a doubles team
and a singles player to state
this past season, it will be
no easy task to send more
representatives at the end
of this season.
For the first time, the
sectional tournament will
be broken up by classes.
There will be two divisions,
Classes 1A and 2A, which
are to be broken up based
on school population.
Given that Sandburg’s
enrollment is greater than
3,500 students, the Eagles
will find themselves in Class
2A. This will pit the Eagles
against some of the tennis
powerhouses in the state.
“We have a lot of bigger
schools in our sectional,
which will make it harder
to qualify for state,” said
Stephanie Garoufalis, who
was one of Sandburg’s
state representatives last
season.
“We’re obviously a 2A
school, so we’re going to be
playing all the big schools
with all the great players,
and everyone knows that
the same old schools are the
same old ones that win tennis,”
Sandburg coach Brian
Ostrander said.
Although Ostrander said
he does not think the Eagles
are quite at the level of being
state powerhouses, he
added that his team is one
But if there is one intangible
Sandburg has that their
opponents may not, it is
team unity.
“What’s amazing about
of the best in its geographical
area.
“We’re getting to a point
where we’re one of the best
teams in the [southwest
suburbs],” Ostrander said.
But that does not guarantee
the Eagles success.
Because of the new classification,
they will not know
who their sectional competition
will be or where
it will be held until around
Sept. 5.
“That’s a big thing, because
if we slide up north
to Hinsdale, then we’re going
to be going in there [underdogs];
if we stay around
here, then we’re going to
be one of the top ones,” Ostrander
said.
The road to getting there
will be more difficult with
the sectional tournament
being shaken up, but Ostrander
still is confident
that he will have plenty of
representatives at the IHSA
state finals.
“I wouldn’t be surprised
if we got three of the four
teams [to state],” he said.
And regardless of the
trials and tribulations that
await the Eagles on the
way, Ostrander set his expectations
somewhere in
the stratosphere.
“They’re high expectations,”
he said. “Winning
sectional, winning conference,
getting to state and
really improving on state
finishes.”
our team is we all get super
close,” Abunaim said. “I see
other teams and — although
you’re on a team — sometimes
it’s very individual.”