Wheeling battles through adversity to beat Conant

It's happened to Wheeling and Conant just like it's happened to a majority of Mid-Suburban League badminton teams this season.

If they haven't graduated most of last year's squad, their top players are currently injured and have started the season on the sidelines while healing.

But host Wheeling, which finished second in the MSL last season, had enough back to hand Conant a 12-3 loss Tuesday afternoon.

The Wildcats are missing their No. 1 singles player, Ashley Lepcin, who injured her medial collateral ligament. Lepcin and Melissa Lee, who is now in college, won the conference championship at first doubles a year ago.

Taking Lepcin's place right now at first singles and doubles is Ashley Lemke, who plays at No. 1 on JV. Lemke lost to the Cougars' Larissa Binkus 21-10, 21-5. Conant also won at sixth singles where Christina Park defeated Wheeling's Oksanka Dovbak in three games.

Wheeling swept doubles.

"We have very young players and we're missing two varsity players," said Wheeling coach Karl Watschke, who is also without Ausrine Rakauskaite. "Ashley (Lemke) helped out. Ausrine should be back soon."

Without knowing what kind of team he would be putting out against Conant -- his first meet of the season -- Watschke liked what he saw.

"I thought we did very well," Watschke said. "We thought we'd lose third and fourth singles because they were JV players. For our first meet, I think we did OK. But we have a lot to learn."

Jennifer LaBarbera has a lot to learn about her team. This is her first year as the Cougars' varsity coach after leading the JV a year ago. This was the Cougars' third dual meet. They had already met Streamwood and Clemente.

"Our number one singles had a pretty strong win," LaBarbera said. "I think the girls learned a lot about playing a challenging team. Hopefully we can learn from this team today some things we can use in the next meet."