Through four matches of her sophomore tennis season at Caledonia High School, Sunny Logan didn’t lose a single game.
Logan, already defending two straight MHSAA Class 4A singles championships, breezed through her first four opponents of the season 6-0, 6-0 — and she wanted to keep up the streak.
But in mid-March, Logan and her teammates found out their season was suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic. On April 15, the Confederates received word from the MHSAA: It was officially over.
The outbreak of the virus ended Caledonia’s season with a 2-2 record and kept Logan off the court a lot more than she wants to. Typically playing four to five hours per day — at a minimum — Logan is resigned to spending two to three hours practicing at a friend’s house.
For her coach, Billy Clark, not seeing Logan training at Magnolia Tennis Club — currently shut down — is a rarity.
“She would be out here pretty much every day if it weren’t for the lockdown,” Clark said.
Apart from her now-limited time on the court, which isn’t easy to get used to, the ‘Feds phenom is working out at home to stay in shape.
“That’s what I’ve been doing on top of practicing: just making sure I’m keeping my endurance up and just doing little things,” Logan said.
Clark said the sophomore’s work ethic, enthusiasm and skill have influenced his plethora of inexperienced players. They often lack what their coach calls “tennis maturity,” but Logan’s presence helps.
“We’ve got a bunch of younger ones that are excited about playing and learning,” Clark said. “They look at her, and they see how hard she works, and hopefully that rubs off on them.”
Logan will return for two more seasons of what has been a dominant high school career so far, but the same can’t be said for Caledonia’s seven seniors.
“Just knowing how much practice they’ve put in, it’s gonna be hard to see them go but also good for the new ones to come up,” Logan said.
One of the departing players is Aden Thomas, Caledonia’s top-ranked boys player. Thomas, relatively new to tennis, had honed his skills in the few years he’d been playing. Clark said Thomas had a shot at success in this year’s state tournament, but of course no such event will happen.
“It’s very sad just seeing how much work he put in over the summer for this upcoming year and just knowing that it was his senior year,” Logan said.
Behind Logan and Thomas, though Clark acknowledged that things would likely have been tough for a young team had the season continued.
“We’re just inexperienced, just as simple as that,” Clark said. “You don’t just pick up a racket and the next day start playing tennis. It doesn’t work that way.”
Clark, who also coaches tennis at Heritage Academy, said the summer is always an excellent time for those inexperienced players to cast off that label. At Magnolia, high school-age players train for two hours a day, four days a week during their summer break.
“This is when they learn,” Clark said.
For players at the level of Logan and Thomas, competitive tournaments also crop up during the summer. Both have played in United States Tennis Association events, but those are shut down indefinitely, and Logan hopes she’ll be able to test her skills with some of the nation’s best under-16 players when play resumes.
“It’s very hard, but we can’t do anything about it,” she said.
For now, Logan — who said her goal is to finish with five championships in her high school career — is doing all she can: practicing fervently and preparing for her junior year.
“She’ll be back next year, and so we’ll kind of build around her,” Clark said.
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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