The St. Aloysius girls tennis team is riding high after a second-place finish in last week’s MAIS Class AAA tournament. Following its state championship the year before, the future looks bright for the program.

A number of key contributors will return, but the Flashes also lose some vitally important players such as Elise and Anne Stewart Piazza, who made it to the semifinals of the No. 1 girls’ doubles tournament before falling to Heritage Academy. Elise Piazza also won the No. 2 girls singles championship in 2017.

Another key player, Adrienne Eckstein, is also graduating. Eckstein has been a varsity player for six seasons.

St. Al does return Taylor Chewning and Ashley Jarrett, who have won two straight Class AAA No. 2 girls doubles championships and reached the final in 2016. Both Chewning and Jarratt will be sophomores next season.

“We’re losing three seniors, but we still have a good nucleus that will still be here,” St. Al coach Rick Shields said. “The girls that won the doubles, they’re both ninth-graders. We have some young kids coming in who will play well, and everybody we have returning should do well.”

Chewning and Jarrett were eager to try and build on their success as well.

“We’re excited, since we’re only in ninth grade and we’ve done so good, for what we’ll do in the future,” Chewning said.

Shields hoped that the success of Chewning and Jarrett, along with the rest of the team the past two years, will help to continue building on the Flashes’ program.

“Oh yeah, that helps you, because that always gives you a good nucleus to build around, plus it just helps for our program to have some visual success like that,” Shields said.