Nasenbeny, Waubonsie Valley open impressively

It was only her first match of the year, but Waubonsie Valley's Bryna Nasenbeny was in midseason form.

The senior three-time state qualifier defeated Lake Park's Jacqueline Vitale 6-0, 6-0 to lead the host Warriors to a 7-0 sweep of their Upstate Eight Conference girls tennis opponents.

"I think I could have played a little better today," Nasenbeny said. "I liked my approach shot, but I've got to work on my transitioning up to the net."

The Warriors coach Phil Galow is encouraged that Nasenbeny is working on being more offensive-minded this year.

"She's grown from being a controlled player her freshman year," Galow said of his first-singles player, who is expected to both reach the 100 career victory mark and break the school record for singles wins. "And she's adding the total offensive package to her game and to her serve. She really wants to improve. She already has a strong mental game and she's becoming a strong team leader."

Vitale, a promising sophomore for the Lancers (0-2) who moved up from second singles last year, thought she learned a great deal from playing against a player of Nasenbeny's caliber.

"She had a really good serve and she moved me around a lot," Vitale said. "And she hit a lot of winners. If I play her again, I'll have to make her move more and play more to her backhand."

"Bryna has improved and grown every year," said Lake Park coach Deb Vogel.

"Vitale is tall and talented and she's just going to get better playing against this kind of kid."

The Warriors' singles players won handily as Nichole Gruneisen took her second singles match 6-2, 6-1 and Kelsey Sappington won at third singles 6-1, 6-1.

"My singles players were pretty solid as I figured they would be," Galow said. "But also as I expected, my doubles weren't playing as aggressively as they did in practice, and there's no excuse that this is the first match of the year. They've been practicing for weeks and some of them are varsity veterans."

The biggest challenge was at fourth doubles, where Lake Park's Heather Zelek and Sara Starobud won the only set the Lancers were to capture on the day, a 7-5 victory in the first set over Heather Gibbs and Kristen Kalas. But the Waubonsie Valley duo came back to win 6-0, 6-2 to give the Warriors a sweep.

Lake Park's Jessica Vitale and Melissa Daciolas pushed Soo Lee and Carioline Yoo as Waubonsie won first doubles 7-5, 6-4.

The Lancers also battled in closely fought two-set losses at second and third doubles.

"We're a young team with only one senior and we played better today than we did in our first match," Vogel said. "Our goal is to improve all year long."