PARKER — This Ponderosa tennis team is hungry.
Monday, the Mustangs are devouring carrots, broccoli and Bambino Burgers before their dual with Arapahoe at The Pinery County Club. Petite to a girl, they chatter, smile abundantly and poke fun at one another, knowing that soon they’ll go outside and start hitting things.
Last Saturday, the Mustangs took a bite out of tennis behemoth Cherry Creek by becoming the first team other than the Bruins to win the prestigious Cherry Creek Invitational since it began in 1996.
While any team other than Cherry Creek will always be considered a dark horse for the Class 5A title until proved otherwise, the Mustangs showed they just might have enough kick this season to end the Bruins’ storied run of 11 consecutive championships.
“It feels good that we’ve lived up to what’s been said about us and actually accomplish it and not get in over our heads,” Mustangs senior Morgan Forsyth said.
The Mustangs had girls in six of the seven finals at the Invitational and won three. Forsyth championed the No. 2 singles spot, freshman Brittney Ricci was dominant at No. 3 singles, and the tandem of Kaley Carmichael and Melissa Skovira took the No. 1 doubles title.
Defending No. 1 singles state champions Erin Sanders, who was battling an abdominal strain, lost in her final 6-4, 4-6, 6-2 to Poudre standout Natalie Dunn.
Sanders and Forsyth remain the Ponderosa trailblazers, as both placed at state last year and showed their teammates the measuring rod between the Mustangs and Bruins has become much shorter.
“I know what it feels like to be the hunter. You’re out to get everybody,” Sanders said.
Beating Cherry Creek at its tournament, however, might be akin to the popular beef jerky commercials that show foolhardy campers messing with a sasquatch.
While good moments are had, the top of the food chain usually finds a way to prevail in the end.
“It’s a fine line,” Mustangs coach Lisa Pulk said. “I’m trying to decide if we should be happy.”
Pulk knows all about the Creek mystique and how opponents’ hearts tend to melt before they step on the court. She graduated from Cherry Creek in 1981 and was on the tennis team that captured its second consecutive state title her senior year. Since team titles were awarded in 1975, the Bruins have won 25 titles in 33 years.
Pulk has coached tennis at Ponderosa the past 18 years and has always enjoyed success, albeit at a different level from the top teams.
“It was really a lot of fun,” Pulk said with a measure of sarcasm and blunt truth, “because we never lost. We were 11-0. We’d take the whole team to state and then we’d turn around the next day on the bus and come home again.”
Ponderosa’s depth appears to be the biggest difference this season. The No. 3 doubles group of Calley LaFon and Chelsea Snow and the No. 4 doubles tandem of Madi Ronzio and Anna Vinton placed second at the Invitational to give the Mustangs 32 points to Cherry Creek’s 24.
Winning the regional tournament is the next big step, and then comes state, where Ponderosa — a school known more for its wrestling than tennis — has never placed higher than third.
“I guess it’s an average school,” said senior Grace Bol, who plays No. 2 doubles with Hannah Drinkwalter, “but average people can do great things, right?”
