PEABODY – When it comes to excellence it doesn’t get much better than the Peabody High girls tennis team, which is not only serving up aces on the hardcourts, but aces in the classroom as well.

The nine seniors on the team carry an average GPA of 3.89. All of them are heading to four-year colleges in the fall. Coach John Sousa credits the group for injecting new life into a program that just a few years ago struggled to field a full team, let alone win a match.

With 27 players on the roster, the team is thriving. With a record of 4-3, the Tanners are ranked 35th in the Division 1 power rankings, just two spots away from qualifying for the tournament for a second straight year. Every starter has a record of .500 or better. 

Sousa, a teacher at the Higgins Middle School, knows he has a special group and has committed to providing all of them an opportunity for them to compete.

“Last year was my first year and I didn’t want to cut anyone,” he said. “We already had our varsity roster established but I firmly believe that everyone deserves the opportunity to learn the sport. As a teacher, even if you haven’t played a sport before, we are confident that if you show up every single day and come to practice and want to be involved as a part of the team, then players will leave here with the skills needed to be successful playing a match of tennis.”

Because of the size of the roster, Sousa brought on Keith McCabe, former boys coach and fellow eighth-grade teacher at the Higgins Middle School, as his assistant. 

“Bringing him on showed the girls that I’m not trying to pretend to be someone I’m not,” Sousa said. “I wanted to show them it’s never too late to learn. Maybe you can’t learn from me, but you can learn from Keith. We all can learn something from each other.”

Last year 20 girls made the team. The year before that, there were only 14. Sousa said with so many inexperienced players, the seniors have stepped up in a big way.

“What a perfect opportunity for our seniors, our veterans, to show their leadership and paint the road for the freshman to see how we do things here so they too will want to continue,” Sousa said.

Leading the charge for the Tanners are senior captains Jessica Chau, Yasmine Giacalone, Jill McGrath, and Theodosia Kourtelidis. Kourtelidis, who plays first doubles with McGrath, is the class valedictorian and will study economics at Harvard this fall, while McGrath plans to study speech pathology at Bridgewater State. Chau plays first singles and plans to take on a pre-engineering track at Bowdoin. Giacalone plays third singles and will head west to Western New England where she plans to play tennis and major in criminal justice with a concentration in homeland security.

The starting lineup includes seniors Vanessa Kolani, the class salutatorian, Argiro Psyhogios at second doubles, and junior Valentina Goga (second singles). Kolani will join Kourtelidis at Harvard where she will major in molecular cellular biology on a pre-med regular admission track while Psyhogios is headed to Simmons. Senior reserves seeing spot action are Tori McCoy, Kimberley Vieria (UMass Lowell), and Miranda Calderon (Simmons).

Last year’s squad bowed out of the tournament in the first round. This year, the girls are striving to take it one step further.

“That was a big achievement for us last year as we hadn’t made it for years,” Kourtelidis said.

“Our overall goal is to improve every day, so hopefully that means making it to the second round,” Kolani said.

Chau noted that the seniors began their tennis journey together as freshmen and that their growth, not only as players but as people has “been impressive. We’ve grown close as friends and there is so much kindness on this team. Our goal is to take it little by little and get past the first round.”

Giacalone said the team is focused on maintaining a positive attitude and the right mentality.

“We are taking each match one at a time – focus on one and then get to the next one,” she said.

McGrath said she remembers joining the team as a freshman when nobody knew much about the sport, but, together, they’ve become a “real” team.

“There really wasn’t much of a team before we got here,” she said. “As freshmen, we weren’t really sure of the correct form and none of us had played formal matches. We had to work at building up our reputation as tennis players. Finally, in our senior year, we’ve gotten more recognition and are more competitive. The school is finally realizing that we have a real tennis team that is just as competitive as all of the other teams.”

With June 7 graduation less than a month away, except for Kourtelidis and Kolani, it will soon be time for the seniors to head their separate ways. They all agree they’ll take plenty of memories with them.

“This is just a really good group of girls who have grown so close,” Kourtelidis said. “We motivate each other both on and off the court. It’s going to be sad to leave, but we’ll all have so many happy memories.”

Sousa credits the seniors for injecting life into the girls tennis program.

“They are such wonderful girls and have helped build the program back up again,” Sousa said. “These girls are some of the kindest, dedicated, hard-working, and coachable students I have ever had the pleasure of coaching and are pure examples of what it is to be a student-athlete. They carry themselves with such elegance and class, and possess a combination of maturity, drive, and ambition that is so rare to find in high school students.”