Middle schools offer future glimpse at high school stars

A Tennis Topics article by JOHN PACKETT, RTA Staff Writer

If you want to watch the future of high school tennis in the area, look no further than the middle schools of Henrico and Hanover counties.

The Henrico/Hanover Middle School League encompasses 15 schools, with another one coming on board next year.

Unfortunately, neither Chesterfield County nor the Richmond city schools include middle-school tennis among their sports, although there is a move afoot to add it in Chesterfield in the future.

For the time being, Henrico and Hanover counties are the places to go to witness the up-and-coming stars on the courts.

Martha Hodges, who coaches the girls and boys at Tuckahoe Middle, has seen many of the area’s best players come through her program, but has watched as the balance of power has moved west to Short Pump and Pocahontas middle schools.

“A lot of the Short Pump kids play at the Dominion Club, and they play a lot,” said Hodges, who is in her 23rd year at Tuckahoe.

Emily Hahn, who played No. 1 at Douglas Freeman High School last spring as a freshman and won the Central Region title, was one of Hodges’ star pupils before dominating at the next level.

Hodges also coached Bridget and Jay Bruner, and Becky Gunn, among others, over the years, feeding some excellent players to Douglas Freeman, when the Rebels frequently challenged Mills Godwin High School for area and state supremacy.

“I think it was due to the fact that a lot of the kids belonged to the neighborhood recreation associations, where there was swimming and tennis,” Hodges said. “Some of these kids had taken tennis lessons for years and years and years.

“The Hanover schools are good, too, because a lot of them play at Burkwood,” where director of tennis Ed Butterworth has one of the area’s top junior programs.

Another rising middle-school program is at Moody, which draws students from all parts of Henrico County to its IB (International Baccalaureate) program. Shyam Venkatasubramanian was Moody’s top boys’ player last spring.

Mary Ellen Lahy, who played for Hodges at Tuckahoe, is now the girls coach at Short Pump, and has enjoyed watching the younger players develop under her guidance.

“It’s tons of fun,” she said. “I love teaching the game and love seeing them develop friendships at that age. At that age, they’re still having more fun than having that competitive nature. They just enjoy going out there and playing,

“Teaching them the love for the game is one of the big things that I try to do. Once you get to high school, even I remember, you have more pressure and it’s very, very competitive. At the middle-school level, it’s competitive, but they have fun, win or lose.”

Most of Lahy’s girls go on to Deep Run High School, which has joined Godwin as one of the premier female teams in the Central Region.

Short Pump will play Pocahontas on Thursday at Short Pump in a match that could decide this year’s girls’ champion. The boys’ league competes in the spring.

The format for middle-school tennis differs from the high-school level. The middle schools play four singles matches and five doubles, while a high-school match features six singles and three doubles matches.

Players can’t compete in both singles and doubles in middle school like they can in high school. “You need 14 people for a starting lineup, so our teams are a little bit bigger than high-school teams,” said Hodges.

“This gives a few more people a chance to play, but that means five through 14 are playing doubles in a team match, and you can win a match by winning all the doubles. That gives them a chance to learn how to play doubles, because a lot of them don’t play doubles, unless they’re tournament players.”

Hanover has four middle schools that play tennis: Oak Knoll, Chickahominy, Liberty and Stonewall Jackson. The Henrico members of the league are Byrd, Tuckahoe, Elko, John Rolfe, Moody, Brookland, Short Pump, Pocahontas, Wilder, Fairfield, Hungary Creek, with Holman joining next year.

“I know there have been some efforts, especially in recent years, to get Chesterfield schools to put tennis in their program,” said Hodges. “Their [high school] teams will have one or two kids who play in private clubs, but that isn’t enough to have a strong team.

“You need more depth than one or two players. If you have kids that started playing when they were little and then keep playing and really get into tennis in middle school, then they’re willing to do the extra work and practice [to help their high school team].”

That’s the way the Henrico/Hanover Middle School League has operated for years, and it shows when the players they feed into the high-school programs help their teams win regional and state championships.