Tonya Swalgren first became interested in the sport of tennis in middle school after watching John McEnroe and Bjorn Borg on television.

She brought her first tennis racquet, an old school wooden one, from Kmart with her first paycheck she collected from raking yards.

She and her twin sibling taught themselves how to play tennis on the tennis courts down the street from their house where they pretended to be McEnroe and Borg. That was how she fell in love with the sport of tennis.

Although Swalgren had a passion for the sport of tennis, she did not play tennis in high school or college. She instead decided to focus on cheerleading. However, she did play tennis for fun every now then while in high school and college.

After graduating from college, she decided to invest in tennis lessons and even played competitively. She played on many competitive teams and played in various tennis tournaments as an adult.

Swalgren has been a high school tennis coach for 16 years. She first started her career as a high school coach at Lexington High School where she was the assistant coach for the girls’ varsity tennis team from 1997-99.

In 2000, she eventually accepted the position for head girls’ varsity tennis coach at White Knoll High School where she coached the girls’ varsity tennis team until 2010, but returned to White Knoll as the girls’ varsity tennis coach in 2016.

Last year, the girl’s tennis team won 4 matches. Swalgren was expecting to double those wins this year, but some of the non-region games were cancelled due to teams having to make up region matches in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence.

On Senior Night Oct. 16, the Lady Timberwolves defeated Gilbert 4-3 to pick up their fifth victory of the season. With the postseason starting Wednesday, it would not surprise Swalgren if a team from Region 5-5A went all the way to the state championship.

River Bluff is the defending Class 5A champion and opened Wednesday at home against Conway.

Gilbert Girls Tennis

Patricia Spire never grew up playing tennis and the only time she actually played tennis was in her physical education class.

She also never played high school or collegiate tennis. Eventually, she did learn the sport when she was approached to coach one of the girls’ sports teams at Gilbert High School.

However, she though the coaching position would be for volleyball, basketball, softball, or golf which were sports she had personally played.

At the time she was still playing golf and softball. However, Gilbert was looking for a tennis coach and Spires eventually decided to take some lessons and play in a 3.0 tennis league.

From there, she started playing for fun and still enjoys learning the sport. In Spires’ 12th season at Gilbert, the overall record for the girl’s tennis team this year was 10-2 for the varsity and 2-0 for the junior varsity.

Because of Hurricane Florence and Michael, this year the varsity girls’ tennis team has missed three varsity matches this year. Spires feels skeptical about the playoffs this year for two reasons :

- Region 5-3A has only two teams, so they don’t even see 10 competitive matches that most regions face.

- The Georgetown High girls’ tennis team, who they will face for round one in the playoffs Wednesday, has eliminated the Lady Indians from the playoffs the past two years.

S.C. HIGH SCHOOL LEAGUE PLAYOFFS

(TENNIS) Wednesday’s Matches

Conway at River Bluff Socastee at Chapin St. James at Dutch Fork Lexington at West Florence Region 6-4A (3rd place team) at Brookland-Cayce Academic Magnet at Pelion Georgetown at Gilbert

Monday’s Match

Batesburg-Leesville at Christ Church

(VOLLEYBALL) Wednesday’s Matches

Latta at Gray Collegiate Waccamaw at Gilbert Pelion at Bishop England B-L at Southside Christian Swansea at Academic Magnet

Thursday’s Matches

St. James at Lexington Conway at River Bluff Chapin at Socastee Dutch Fork at Carolina Forest