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GREENSBORO, Ga. — This is LOA’s 3rd year as a varsity team. It was just a club team for four years prior.

This year we did not have captains but our two veteran leaders for the boys were Cooper Ciavola and for the girls, Love Kalpak. They both have been with the program since it started as a club team seven years ago.

The goals we had for this team at the beginning of the season were for both the boy’s and girl’s team to win the Region Championship, which they both did; the girls for the 1st time ever, and the boys repeating from last year. The ultimate goal was for both teams to get to the State Championship and hopefully win, as the boys did. The girls came up a little short, losing in the round of the Elite 8 to Seminole County, last year’s state champions, which was the furthest that they have gotten.

The girl’s team had a record of 9 wins and 3 losses, and the boys had a perfect record of 13-0
We had many postseason awards that both the boy’s and girl’s team earned:

• Player of the Year in Region 8 1A – Cooper Ciavola
• Boy’s 1st team All-Region – Maddox Cantrell, Noah Gessner, and Adam Kalmanowicz
• Girl’s 1st team All-Region – Love Kalpak, Lili Sheehan, Ella Cooper, Elizebeth Beatty, Anika Imhof, and Hailey Heinen
• Boys Tennis Coach of the Year Region 8 1A – Tom Imhof

Some of the outstanding statistics that stick out in my mind are Cooper Ciavola, Maddox Cantrell, Noah Gessner, and Adam Kalmanowicz never lost a single set all year, and they each had a perfect 13-0 record in their matches.

Both teams were motivated by their seniors who have been playing together for many years and this was the last chance for them to make a run to win both the Region and the State Championship. These seniors started the program seven years ago as middle schoolers.

We had two outstanding fathers that were our community volunteers who have a deep knowledge of the game of tennis and each of them help start the tennis club at LOA seven years ago and have been a part of LOA tennis ever since. Without Ron Kalpak and Todd Ciavola there every day, our team never would have reached the success that they did.

In our boy’s state championship run, we played five matches in four weeks and in the elite 8, final 4 and the championship against Telfair County, we knocked off the past three years’ state champions in all of these 3 rounds. This was quite an accomplishment. We look forward to trying to repeat this success next year, since seven out of our eight boys will be returning. With the girls, we are losing three seniors but have several good athletes that will be playing with us next year.

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