Currently in first place in the CSL South, the Glenbrook South women’s tennis team is 4-1 in conference.

According to head coach Katie Nicolotti, South has had big wins against Deerfield and Lake Forest, whom they’ve lost to in the past, and have come in fourth-place in the Loyola tournament, Fremd invite and the New Trier invite this year.

Nicolotti feels that team chemistry is the key to her team’s success. In fact,  creating team unity was a personal goal of hers.

“I feel like each year, my personal goals for the team involves fostering a sense of team unity,” Nicolotti said. “I try to remind them that we win and lose as a team. They may lose their match, but we may win as a team.”

Even though the season is still young, Nicolotti’s goal seems to be becoming a reality. Senior co-captains Mary Friedman and Allie Sonneborn not only understand the importance of team unity, but see it developing first hand.

“This year is the best team I’ve seen because they are so nice and genuine off the court, it makes it easy on the court to work well together,” Friedman explained.

Sonneborn echoed the importance of team unity by expressing what she thinks her role as captain should be.

” It’s important to foster team chemistry so everyone feels that they are welcomed on the team,” she said “it’s important to make people feel that they are connected.”

The big wins don’t come as a surprise to Nicolotti, however. Since she started coaching, Nicolotti has noticed that the team tends to get better every year.

“Since my first year, we’ve always been slowly moving up in the state standings,” she said “my first year here, we were 32nd (in state), and last year, we were tied for 20th.”

Sonneborn expects that the reason for such a good team this year is a change in attitude.

“Every girl on the team wants to be on the team,” Sonneborn explains “they are all really devoted.”

Armed with seven seniors and a good sense of team unity, Nicolotti predicts not only a good year in general, but sees an opportunity to succeed in conference play.

“When I started, New Trier creamed us […] But in the past few years, we’ve been able to get more and more games off of them” Nicolotti said “and now because this might be a down year for them, and because we have a lot of talented players, this might be a pretty good year for us in the conference.”

Despite the promising outlook, there are still things that both Friedman and Sonneborn understand need to be worked on.

“We need to make sure the energy at practice is very high level because tennis is a sport where you have to push yourself to the maximum in order to play well in matches,” Friedman said.

In addition to energy levels, there’s always strategy to work on.

“We’ve been working to implement a lot of doubles strategies,” Sonneborn said “we are trying to take more risks with our strategies.”

According to Friedman and Sonneborn, seniors have proven to be the backbone this season, and include: Korri Hershenhouse, Stephanie Kaszuba, Alison Mah, Grace Pittner, and Zoe Shancer.

The Titans hope to send Friedman and Sonneborn to state this season, along with junior Caroline Ryba.

Overall, Nicolotti feels that the season has been successful both through their attitudes on and off the field.

“They mesh so well together, not only because they are teammates, but because they are friends outside of school,” Nicolotti said “they have a lot of fun[…]they really enjoy what they’re doing and I can’t really ask for anything more than that.”