Starting slow yet finishing strong is nothing short of what the Manhattan High girls Varsity tennis team did as they placed third in the Emporia Invitational. The team received very little time before the tournament started and they were off to playing their first matches of the day.

“I think the team did really well as a whole,” sophomore Kate McGee said. “We worked well, we probably did more of our strong suits while we were playing and we worked hard even though most of us lost our first games because we didn’t spend enough of time warming up.”

The team faced a lot of previously unseen challenges during this meet, such as playing teams that they had not played so far in the season. This meet was their first time going against Derby this season as well as Saint James Academy.

“I feel like we all just had a pretty slow start overall,” sophomore Kira Schartz said. “I feel like for me and Joanna [Park, sophomore] one our biggest challenges was Saint James. They had a lot of like technical work, they post a lot at the net and they had different sings and me and joanna didn’t really know how to combat that. Then they would both come to the net and were not sure how to counter that, but once we adjusted to that I feel like it went pretty smooth.”

The ability to adjust and adapt to conditions and the different playing styles of different teams is present in any athletic competition at any level. For MHS, the ability to adapt made itself known during this meet.

“I feel like [the ability to adapt] is a very important ability because different teams have different strong suits,” Schartz said. ”For example, Joanna is good at the net and I’m good at the baseline, so everyone has their different strengths and we need to be able to adapt to different teams strengths and exploit their weaknesses.”

This will be the second time that the team has placed third this season. While the ability to adapt to Saint James different style of playing, it was not their only strength that presented itself throughout the day.

“Cheering each other on is one of our best strengths,” McGee said. “Like after one person comes off we go cheer on our teammates or we get our own work done, our forehands are really good for most of us, doubles players are really consistent about moving on from mistakes and focusing on winning the next point.”

The team’s next meet is on Monday where they will face every team in the league, including their rival, Washburn Rural, during the Centennial League meet.

“If we just stay consistent and not bring ourselves down by little mistakes and instead correct those mistakes and treat it like a practice, we will compete well and we will play well,” McGee said. “It just takes time and effort in order to get good enough to compete up against Washburn, which we have shown that we are capable of doing that earlier in the season.”