With three weeks down of the spring sports season, many teams are beginning their competitions. Many spring sports at WHS have unique scoring systems that are not a typical way to earn points. One of these sports is tennis.

Tennis is notoriously difficult to understand if you are not familiar with the game, so here is a quick guide to understanding the scoring.

A tennis match against another school is won based on the number of matches the team won collectively– everyone plays their match against the opposing players, and a win is counted as a point for the winner’s school. Most matches have five doubles and five singles, and a total of nine “points” to be won.

Individual matches are played best of three sets. Sets are played first to six games, and games are first to four points. Points are not counted as one, two, three, and four, but instead they are called fifteen, thirty, and fourty, and zero is called love. 

The game starts zero-zero (or love all, as “all” is said when the opponents have the same score), and the players rally and play out the point until someone wins. They have won the point, but they need to win four points to win the game. The score is now fifteen-love, and the game continues. The first person to get past forty is the winner, and has now won one game. 

The first person to win six games wins the set, and then another set is played. If the other player wins that one, they play a third set as a tiebreaker. 

The Wildcat tennis teams both had their first home matches this week– the boys played Aloha on Wednesday, and the girls played West Salem on Thursday. Both teams started the season off strong, with 9-0 and 7-2 victories over the opposing schools!