This year, the Lady Dawgs tennis team will be adjusting to a new head coach, Dale Hall. While North Platte High School athletes will be practicing hard and getting used to new coaches, there is high hopes for this upcoming sports season.

Hall coached the boys and girls teams for a few seasons until they found John Lehmer in 2015. When Lehmer resigned this year, NPHS needed someone to step in and Hall decided to be that person. “There was nobody else planning on doing it and I have coached the team before, so I thought I’d step up and do it this year and kind of see where it goes from there,” Hall said.

Hall is planning on keeping things close to the way it has been the past few years. “We are still going to try and get the girls to compete hard and win as many matches as possible, while trying to have fun,” he said. Hall feels like the biggest thing that could lead to success this year, is to have the players buy in to what he is saying and do things the way that they are taught. “You don’t have to be perfect at doing everything, you have to be willing to compete. If you go out and are willing to compete, you will do just fine,” he said.

In order for the team to improve, Hall feels they should not focus as much on just getting the ball over the net, but focus on where they are hitting it also. He also feels like aggression will help the team improve from where they were last year, to this year. “We need to be able to put away some volleys. I feel like if we are able to do that, we will have better chances of winning matches,” he said. Hall feels like the team’s goal should be to get better from the first practice to the last, and most importantly, to just have fun while they are out there.