Marble Falls tennis begins season

CAPTION: Senior Cooper Womack is back at No. 1 singles for the Mustangs. Staff photo by Jennifer Fierro

Marble Falls High School team tennis team is starting its 2025 season immediately.

After conducting its own Midnight Madness Aug. 4, the Mustangs and Lady Mustangs will return to the Charlie and Nancy Herrington Tennis Center to welcome Copperas Cove at 9 a.m. Tuesday, Aug 5.

They’ll travel to Taylor for matches that begin at 9 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 7, welcome Lampasas at 4:30 p.m. Friday, Aug.8, and go to Leander Glenn at 3 p.m. Monday, Aug. 11.

All of these matches happen before Marble Falls travels to Jarrell for the start of District 25-4A play at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 14. The top four teams advance to the playoffs. A round robin will determine the order.

Head coach Samuel Whitley offered a simple explanation for why his athletes are playing so many matches so early in August.

“That’s the way to get in shape,” he said. “We have a highly-skilled team and we have to get in playing shape.”

That’s because of how the sport keeps score.

Three boys and three girls doubles teams and a mixed doubles team each play a match. Then players compete in singles matches. A total of 19 matches are played. The winners of each match earn a point toward their overall team points. The squad that wins 10 matches first wins the head-to-head matchup.

Because of the parity in the district, Whitley made a determination long ago about how he puts the varsity together.

“We’re going to put our best seven out on the court,” he said. “Our sixth, seventh and eighth – those can change. You have to stay within the top seven in order to play. There’s not a big gap between five, six, seven, eight or nine spots.”

Marble Falls is led by eight proven seniors. Top of the list is Cooper Womack, who has won three consecutive district championships in boys singles and advanced to the Class 4A state tournament the last two years. Other seniors include Chloe Brown, Mia Hernandez, Nevaeh (Montoya) Nelson, Chloe Taylor, Sophia Trudeau, Payton Glaser and Nicolas Smith.

The girls doubles team of Trudeau and Hernandez and Glaser and Smith in boys doubles advanced to the Class 4A Region III tournament in May,

Junior Cooper Kelley returns after he and partner Weston York, who graduated in May, advanced to the state tournament in boys doubles.

Womack summed up why his class is so good in the sport.

“I think coaches did a great job of recruiting and building our grade,” he said, adding it also helped that his classmates recruited their friends to the program.

The seniors assisted during the two Marble Falls tennis academies this summer, which illustrates their love for the sport and for each other, Womack said.

While this may be Marble Falls’ best tennis team in years, the Mustangs are looking for better this fall. They have finished second in the district race the last two years and are aiming for the breakthrough season now.

“We want to win a lot,” Womack said. “We’re super motivated.”

“There’s a lot of talk,” Whitley said. “But there’s also action. We do have a lot of seniors. But they’re going to have to work.”