By Tobey Lee, Sports Editor

For the third time in the past four years, Shalhevet’s tennis team does not have a coach.

And this year, it also has no games scheduled.

The team has practiced a few times, and team members were confident that upperclassmen would run practice and make things flow. However, the team did not have any scheduled matches, even though they had a team ready to play.

The team had 12 players, including eight seniors and four juniors, according to its Schoology page. Along with golf, tennis is a co-ed sport, so there are four girls and eight boys on the team.

Dean of Student Life Jonny Ravanshenas didn’t say exactly what happened, but said that the administration would revamp the program for next year.

He said the team was “going through extenuating circumstances.”

“It’s unfortunate that we can not have this program this year, but we are working on strengthening it to ensure that the program will be better in the future,” Dr. Ravanshenas said.

He also said the administration was trying its best to fix the program, and feels really bad about the fact that there are no games.

Nathan Benyowitz ‘17 was the coach of the tennis team from the 2015-16 until he graduated last year. He is now playing Division 1 tennis at the University of Delaware.

In Nathan’s last year, the team pulled off victories against Milken, De Toledo, and New Roads, according to MaxPreps.com, an online source for results of high school sporting events.

Junior Ariella Sassover said that not having a professional coach was somewhat nice.

“Last year was really fun,” said Ari. “It was really nice, it was super chill… It was a nice relief to be on the tennis team where it was just kids, just to like be together, bond.”

But without Nathan, there were no games scheuled at all. In March, senior Arman Marghzar said that there hadn’t been much playing time alloted for the team, saying they were trying to get the school to get them matches. He said players would be willing to compete even on short notice.

“It’s already midway through the season,” Arman said at the time. “We’ve had a couple practices already.”

The team had practice on April 24, however, it did not go well without a coach, said Arman.

“It’s all up to the school if we’re able to schedule matches versus other schools,” Arman said.

Arman said working with Nathan had been good experience for everyone.

“He’s like a remarkable leader,” Arman said. “To me, he was like a mentor. He was a huge part to the team last year. Already in the first practice I could tell it was so much harder without Nathan.”

Junior Leor Kaminski said that without Nathan, upperclassmen would need to step up and try to fill his role.

“The captains on the team would decide the lineups and decide who would play, we would obviously try and get as many people to play that can,” said Leor.

But that wasn’t necessary, because the season ended without any matches at all.