Quick Study Becomes Three-Time Champ
October 18, 2012
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
At the end of every fall, Escanaba native Denny Lueneberg heads back to California after another summer in his hometown and fall coaching the Eskymos girls tennis team.
A tennis instructor in Palm Springs who played at Western Michigan University, he’s seen plenty of talented players over the decades. So his final thought to Escanaba senior Codi Jenshak before he departed this month was especially meaningful.
Lueneberg told Jenshak he used to consider her a softball player who also plays tennis – which made sense, since Jenshak pitched the Eskymos to the Division 2 Quarterfinals this spring.
But after this fall, Lueneberg said he now sees Jenshak as a tennis player who plays softball – a seal of lasting approval on a career that included three MHSAA singles championships, including MHSAA Upper Peninsula Division 1 titles at No. 1 the last two seasons.
“I felt like I finally had done what I needed to do, for him to think that,” Jenshak said. “He takes tennis very seriously. He always thinks no one could ever play enough. He has pretty high expectations.
“When he told me that, it was just special.”
Jenshak receives a Second Half High 5 for repeating as the best player in the Upper Peninsula Division 1. And as a sophomore, she won the title at No. 2 singles.
As a freshman, Jenshak played mostly No. 4 doubles. After all, she was just starting to learn the game.
Jenshak had played for fun and attended one of Lueneberg’s beginner clinics when she was young. But nothing serious – until Lueneberg saw her hitting with her dad one summer and encouraged Codi to come out for the high school team.
He knew he could teach her the shots. What caught his eye was how she reacted to and pursued the ball, like a softball infielder making a play.
After a mostly uneventful freshman year, Jenshak lost a close match to start her sophomore season and then beat the same player handily in the MHSAA Final. She split four matches with Kingsford’s Sam Fleming as a junior, but beat her when it counted – in the championship match.
This season she beat Fleming all five times they faced each other, including 6-1, 6-2 in the Final, and finished 18-2 overall. Her losses were to Iron River West Iron County’s Kylee Erickson, the U.P. Division 2 champion – Jenshak finished 1-2 against her this season.
Jenshak did beat Erickson in their first meeting, but then lost to her four days later. Jenshak didn’t speak much with Lueneberg for three days after that – and that hammered home again how seriously she took her “other” sport.
“She processes things. I don’t know where that came from … but you can explain things or maybe try to do things with her in tennis that other players are not capable of doing in terms of strategy and shot selection,” Lueneberg said. “She’s willing to do that. It cost her a couple of matches her junior year, but by the end of the year she was doing those things and becoming a better player. … (And) by no means has she reached her potential.”
Jenshak also plays basketball, and sees crossovers among all of her sports.
She picked up tennis quickly, just as she’s been able to pick up other sports. She has a similar point in both her overhand throwing and serving motions where her arm slows down. The lateral movement she uses as an occasional second basemen is similar to that employed on the tennis court or even defending a basketball opponent.
Her strengths and weaknesses correlate for all three. She uses the same steady work ethic to fix the bad and hone the good.
Girls tennis is played in the spring in the Lower Peninsula, so Jenshak hasn’t gotten a chance to see how she’d compare against top players from downstate. She did get that chance in softball, leading her team before it fell to eventual Division 2 runner-up Saginaw Swan Valley in the Quarter at Central Michigan.
“I’m actually pretty curious. I played a lot of softball in lower Michigan, played a lot in Wisconsin and Illinois and other places, so I can see where my talent stacks up against other people,” Jenshak said. “But in tennis I can’t. We don’t get out as much. … I’d love to see how we would stack up. We just never got the opportunity.”
She might get a better gauge next season if she decides on a small college – she’s received interest at that level for both sports, and is considering playing both. Or she might go to Central Michigan and attempt to walk-on the softball team and play on the school’s club tennis team.
“If she wanted to commit to this sport, she has the skills and the athletic ability. She’ll obviously get better and enjoy the game at a different level,” Lueneberg said of Jenshak's tennis potential.
“Usually it’s a summer thing, and we try to get the most out of them. Once in a while we get an athlete like Codi, and we try to develop them. Someone special comes along every once in a while."
PHOTO: Escanaba's Codi Jenshak returns a volley during a match earlier this season. (Photo courtesy of RRNsports.com)
Country Day Near-Perfect in Repeat Run
June 3, 2017
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
KALAMAZOO – There were cheers and congrats after the final match at Saturday’s Division 3 Finals at Kalamazoo College.
On the other side of the net, Detroit Country Day’s tennis players mostly were speechless as senior Sasha Hartje pulled aside a teammate to tell her it was OK.
The Yellowjackets had fallen in the final match of the day. But they’d won the first 39 of the weekend. So for the veteran Hartje, surrounded by mostly younger teammates, it was an understandable but still weird scene – one point shy of perfect was still perfect enough for the repeat champions.
“Nobody’s going to remember this one match we lost. They’re going to remember that we won 39 out of a possible 40 points, and that’s unbelievable,” Hartje said.
“We’ve never done this well, collectively, as a team. And we’ve never been as bonded as we are as a team this year, so it was unbelievable my senior year to be this close with all my teammates and to win this – and I got to win with my sister, which was super exciting for me.”
Country Day cleared the field by 16 points after last season winning the Lower Peninsula Division 3 title by only one.
It’s fair to say this was expected. All eight Yellowjackets flights entered Friday’s first round as top seeds. Sophomore Monique Karoub, senior Sadina Fadel and freshmen Nina Khaghany and Alexis Nardicchio swept Nos. 1-4 singles, respectively, without losing a set.
On the doubles side, Hartje and her sophomore sister Elle gave up only two games on the way to their win. Junior Heather Zimmerman and sophomore Tara Rahmani at No. 2 and juniors Jenna Lee and Maya Nassif at No. 4 also made it through their brackets without giving up a set.
That left the No. 3 doubles final as the last match of the tournament. The crowd gathered anticipating that another Country Day win would give the team the first perfect score in MHSAA Tennis Finals history.
But after winning the first set on a tie-breaker and then dropping the second 6-2, Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook Kingswood seniors Francis Dube and Ava Harb put the finishing touches on a second straight flight championship by claiming the third set 6-2. Dube and Harb had won the No. 4 doubles title in 2016.
Still, Country Day’s 39 team points tied Cranbrook Kingswood’s 2013 team for the most at a Girls Tennis Final in at least a decade.
“Obviously we want everyone to win just because they feel better when they win. But we’re proud of everyone, and 3 doubles, they played a really tough match and fought all the way through,” Country Day coach Jessica Stencel said. “It’s hard being the only team that doesn’t come out on top, but they still got second. I think that’s pretty great too. And 39 out of 40, I think that’s a pretty solid year.”
It had an interesting start. Hartje, last season’s champion at No. 1 singles and the runner-up in 2015, suffered multiple ankle sprains playing an early game for the soccer team and had to miss six weeks for recovery.
By the time she returned, she said, it didn’t make sense to challenge for her former spot atop the singles lineup – so instead she joined her sister at No. 1 doubles and helped Elle earn a second straight championship at that flight.
“We’re really lucky that Monique (Karoub, who won No. 2 singles in 2016) is equally as talented. She finished barely losing any games in this entire tournament,” Stencel said. “Sasha is so talented and really helped us out at No. 1 doubles, and the whole way from top to bottom they did really well this year.”
So did Grand Rapids Christian, the runner-up for the second straight season – but this time in a self-admitted surprise. The Eagles graduated seven from the team that just missed winning a year ago, and had only two senior starters and three freshmen in the doubles lineup.
Senior McKenzie Moorhead (No. 2 singles), juniors Maria Poortenga (No. 3) and Emily Schellenboom (No. 4), and freshman Maya Barbee and junior Anna Cole (No. 4 doubles) all finished flight runners-up.
“You just try to go with a good core. We had a great set of leaders at the top, Leah (Newhof) and McKenzie as number one and two singles players, and when you have that luxury of great players at the top, you really look to make sure your depth is good,” Grand Rapids Christian coach Tim Morey said. “That’s where we kinda made our money. … We really looked to build with some youth. We have three freshmen and a few juniors, and we have a really nice mix that allowed us to have the depth we needed to be successful when we got to the state finals.”
Adding to the historic nature of this tournament was Imlay City senior Grace Whitney. She advanced to the championship match at No. 1 singles before falling to Karoub 6-0, 6-1, to end a mighty rise among the state’s elite.
As a freshman, Whitney was the first player from her school – girls or boys – to qualify for the MHSAA Tennis Finals. Last spring as a junior, she advanced to the No. 1 singles semifinals as the fifth seed. She entered this weekend seeded second.
“I’m from a small town and there’s not a lot of people who go do great big things, so it really means a lot,” said Whitney, who will play next season at Wright State University in Ohio. “And all the people in my town all support me.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Detroit Country Day No. 2 singles player Sadina Fadel connectsduring Saturday's finals rounds at Kalamazoo College. (Middle) McKenzie Moorhead returns a volley on the way to finishing runner-up at No. 2 singles for Grand Rapids Christian. (Click to see more from HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)