ROCKINGHAM — Putting an exclamation point at the end of its regular season Thursday, the Richmond Senior High School girls’ tennis team returned to the win column.
Two days after suffering a loss at Pinecrest High School, the Lady Raiders finished a strong stretch of contests to close its Mid-South Conference slate.
Recording its fourth win in its last five matches, Richmond completed the regular-season series sweep of Hoke County High School. The Lady Raiders cruised to a 7-2 victory.
Winning five of the six singles matches, Richmond iced the team win heading into doubles. For good measure, two of the three doubles pairings picked up a win.
“This has been an exciting, and long, week of tennis for our program,” head coach Jessica Covington said. “We started with having success at the pre-regional tournament and ended it today with a big win against Hoke County.
“We’re starting to see our level of competition pay off, as all the girls are getting better and better each match. Hopefully this win will give us some momentum as we prepare for the postseason.”
Competing in best-of-three set matches, five Lady Raiders closed their regular season with a singles win.
No. 1 junior Colbie Covington defeated Laure Pena by matching set scores of 6-4, 6-4. That was followed by a 6-1, 6-2 win by No. 3 senior Jentry Denson over Hera Lin.
No. 4 sophomore Sydney Barnes and No. 5 sophomore Erin Drumwright also won handily. Barnes beat Sahara Henderson 6-1, 6-3, and Drumwright took care of business against Shannon Clark 6-0, 6-3.
Going into a tiebreaker, No. 6 junior Angelina Culbreth won the first set before splitting the second set with Alyssa Ledlow 6-6. In the extra set, Culbreth earned a 7-2 win.
In doubles action, the No. 1 duo of Colbie Covington and freshman Molly Covington cruised to an 8-2 victory over Tino Lin and Hera Lin.
Richmond’s other doubles victory came courtesy of Barnes and Drumwright, an 8-6 win against Pena and Ledlow.
The Lady Raiders (6-7, 5-5 MSC) will now wait to see if they qualified for the 7A dual team regionals.
Earlier this week, Colbie Covington, Denson and Drumwright each qualified for the 7A individual regionals tournament.
The Richmond Observer will provide more information about the postseason when it’s made available.
