The Cavalier tennis team entered the 2009 season with a lot of question marks – namely, how an extremely young team would hold up against tough regional opponents.

It’s fair to say Lake Travis’ performance Friday and Saturday in the region tournament in San Antonio was a victory for the program, even if the Cavaliers finished third.

Lake Travis fell to eventual region winner Boerne Champion 10-6 on Saturday morning, and then topped Flour Bluff in the afternoon third place match by a gritty score of 10-9.

“This finish is like another team winning district and basically three rounds of playoff games,” Lake Travis head coach Carol Creel said. “We should finish the year ranked in the top 10 in the state.”

The Cavs topped LBJ 10-3 in the first round of the tournament and Gregory-Portland 10-2 in the second round to reach the semifinal against Champion.

Despite falling behind 4-0 early in the Champion match, Lake Travis rallied when the girls’ doubles teams of Millie Nichols/Briana Oliver, Ryan Brown/Courtney Schulte and Smrithi Hariharam/Lori Xu swept to pull Lake Travis within one at 4-3. The Cavs briefly took the lead thanks to stellar singles play by Nichols, Austin Mayo and Ryan Brown, but Boerne eventually tied the match at 6-6 before pulling away.

“You know, I always feel like we have a shot, especially with a young team like this, even without the experience,” Creel said. “We had enough matches that we could have gotten into it, but the match-ups didn’t really favor us.”

The outcome was a positive sign, even if the Cavs didn’t come out on top.

“I just feel like the fact that we had a shot at beating them, despite how much higher they were ranked than us, and that said a lot about this team and what it’s made of,” Creel said. “We’ve had a lot of great teams, but for this group’s age, they accomplished more than I ever could have expected. I was very pleased with all of them.”

Lake Travis showed its grit in the third-place match against Flour Bluff, winning 10-9, with Xu as the hero, winning the deciding match.

“Lori Xu did a great job pulling out the last match for us against Flour Bluff. She’s got a lot on her plate as a student, and for her to come through for us was so huge,” Creel said before highlighting other big performances. “Mayo played his best tennis in singles, and I think when everyone sees your No. 1 play that way, it has a ripple effect all the way down. And we got that from Nichols, too. And Brown, our freshman, really played well, taking care of business in the background. She’s got a really exciting future ahead of her.”

Creel always shoots for a region title, but she’s pulled a lot from the team’s performance to be optimistic about this spring and down the road.

“On the boys’ team, three of our top six players are freshmen and sophomores and two of our top three girls are freshmen,” she said. “We did well in our one, two and three lines, and that’s huge. This should mean a good future for Lake Travis tennis.”

She also felt like having two assistants dramatically improved the team’s chances and performance throughout the region tournament.

“I’ve been asking for ten years to have a full-time tennis assistant like the teams I compete against have. All the teams we play at this level have that, and so it’s nice to have Coach Beth Howes and Coach Ian Dillon,” she said. “It made a huge difference, I really feel like they helped pull out a lot of matches.”

It will be a long winter for tennis fans, but odds are great that Lake Travis will yet again be represented at the state tournament in May.