The Whippet Football Team opened up the 2019 season with a hard fought contest against the Beloit Turner Trojans on Friday, August 23. 

After a scoreless 1st quarter, the Trojans took advantage of a few Whippet mistakes and took a 21-0 lead into the half. 

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Photos Courtesy of Bob Mischka

The Whippets came back and held Beloit Turner scoreless throughout the entire 2nd half of the game, and Whitewater running back Will Leibbrand found the end zone twice in the 4th quarter on runs of 14 and 57 yards.  Unfortunately, the first half deficit was too much to overcome, and the Whippets fell 13-21.

The Whippets will look to rebound on the road at East Troy on Friday, August 30th. 

The Whippet Girls’ Tennis Team just returned from the Altoona Invite which was played in Altoona and Chippewa Falls. Whitewater went 4-1 over the two-day tournament.

On Thursday, the Whippets opened with a 2-5 loss to Ashland. Picking up wins were Josie Hintz at 4 singles, and Katelyn Lashley and Emily Scherer at 3 doubles. There were close matches at 2 singles, and 1 and 2 doubles, but the Whippets just couldn’t quite pull them out.

Coach Tim Nelson stated, “We continued to improve throughout the rest of the day and were able to carry it over into the next day as well. One of the things that we need to work on is starting out. We are notoriously slow starters, and if we are to continue to improve, this will become a key area. Most of our remaining matches are dual meets; we only play one match, and thus can’t think that we can use the first match of the day to get into it.”

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Photos Courtesy of Greg Stewart

The Whippets took 11 players to the tournament, so there was quite a bit of moving positions from singles to doubles and changing of doubles teams. Several kids had a very successful tournament; Josie Hintz was 5-0, Tessa Papcke, Sophie Olson, and Katelyn Lashley were all 4-1, and Anisa Dauti was 2-0 in her varsity matches.

 Whitewater is right back at it on Monday morning, August 26, with a dual meet in Columbus.

Team Scores
Whitewater 2, Ashland 5
Whitewater 5, Chippewa Falls 2
Whitewater 7, Mondovi 0
Whitewater 4, Altoona 3
Whitewater 5, West Salem 2

The Whitewater Invite on Tuesday, August 20 was a rather long day with many logistical problems. In order to help out a couple of teams that had some schools back out of their quad, the Whitewater Quad ended up with six teams. In order for this to work, it was going to require some schools moving back and forth between Whitewater and Fort Atkinson. The weather decided to make things even more difficult with a few rain delays in Whitewater, which forced even more teams to move to Fort. Of course a half an hour after teams moved to Fort it rained at the Aquatic Center courts, but not over at the Fort Atkinson High School courts. With all of the delays and moving around there were a few teams that were only able to get two matches in, and others were able to get all three in.

Whitewater was one of the schools that only finished two of their matches with 6-1 wins over both West Salem and Fort Atkinson.

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Photos of Kaitlyn Partoll Courtesy of Bob Mischka

Coach Tim Nelson stated, “I was quite pleased with how we played today. We showed improvement from yesterday’s quad and continued to make the strides that we need to. The match of the day was between Kaitlyn Partoll and Olivia Granec of Fort. The two girls played a number of incredible points in a match that went back and forth before Kaitlyn was able to pull it out with the closest of super tie-break scores.” Wednesday the Whippets headed up to Altoona to participate in the Altoona Invite on Thursday and Friday.

The Whippet victories secured the 300th career win for Coach Tim Nelson.

The Whippets started their 2019 tennis season at the East Troy Quad on Monday, August 19, facing some very solid competition. East Troy went 3-0 on the day taking the championship followed by Union Grove at 2-1, Whitewater at 1-2, and Monroe at 0-3.

Coach Tim Nelson stated, “We are going to face some growing pains to begin the season as we have several new players and many others that have had to move up quite a bit in the line-up. Today I felt that we were moving in the right direction. Every match the kids played better;  they started making strides in many areas and did what we needed to do to start improving. We definitely have things that we need to work on, but that is what these early matches are good for, showing where your strengths and weaknesses are and what you need to do to get better.”

The team was right back at it on Tuesday with three more matches in the Whitewater Quad.