Freedom’s girls tennis team hosted Whitehall on Aug. 23, the third match of the week for the Patriots and the Zephyrs, won by the Pates, 7-0.

Khadeejah Hussain won at No. 1 singles against Aleksandra Niski, 6-1, 6-0, and Katie Ryer won the match at No. 3 singles against Angie Ramirez 6-0, 6-0, but the match at No. 2 singles, won by Misha Braski over Jessica Lin, 6-0, 6-3, was the most challenging.

“She hit a lot of short balls which are pretty hard to get to when you’re all the way back,” said Braski regarding Lin.

As Lin crept into the second set, Braski fought to close out the match.

“I’m really good at just going with the flow. I don’t really let the score or noise in the background get to me. I just play the game,” Braski said. “I’ve been playing for six to seven years now, so usually I can control where I want the ball to go if it’s long or short or a lob.”

Lin did her best to keep moving Braski around the court.

“I just kept encouraging myself to keep going, even though I wasn’t doing well the first set,” Lin said.

Daniela Guzzo and Viola Avitabile won at No. 2 doubles against Elena Attieh and Marilyn Ogunsemore, 6-0, 6-2.

“They play well together. They do the right things,” said Freedom coach Mark Sigmon. “They can play with anybody. Last year they were 10-5, maybe 11-4, the first year they played competitive tennis in their lives.”

Sigmon is also happy with freshmen, Aurora Clark and Esha Kotadia, who won at No. 3 doubles against Lamitta Layous and Leah Bachour, 6-1, 6-1.

Mia Napolitano and Katie Nenna won at No. 4 doubles against Grace Ruta and Gigi Burgio, 6-1, 6-0, and at No. 1 doubles, Bailey Barber and Paola Pagan won over Tatyana Mallouhi and Jana Hanna, 8-2.

Despite the loss for the Zephyrs, Whitehall coach Susan DiGiacomo is seeing positives early in the season.

“Our team doubled in size this year, which we’re really happy with, but we have a lot of players who are new to the game,” she said. “There are a lot of teachable moments, trying to get them acclimated to playing tennis and then incorporating the rules and strategies, and they’ve picked it up quickly.”

Whitehall lost a close match to Pocono Mountain West, 3-4, earlier last week and fell to East Stroudsburg South, 1-6.

Also earlier last week, Freedom defeated East Stroudsburg North and Pocono Mountain East.

This week, the Zephyrs will host Liberty, and the Patriots will take on Nazareth.

“We’ve lost to Nazareth, 4-3, in the last two years, losing in doubles where we were up a set, and we lost in 10-point tiebreakers too,” said Sigmon. “It was terrible, and we were up in each one, 5-3 or 6-4. But we are what we are. We’re an 8-8 team that could go 6-10 or 10-6.”