The Whitehall tennis team came into the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference Tournament with a distinct disadvantage.

The team was missing their top singles player, Eiman Nazif, who had a family obligation to attend to over the weekend and wasn't able to play. Even with that and a tough draw for their other singles players, Whitehall was able to come away with a third place finish in number-three doubles.

The team of Amanda Endy and Samantha Nino breezed through the first round and then pulled off a nice upset of number two seeded Hannah Madden and Leah Colussi from Nazareth. Endy and Nino came into the tournament as the number seven seed. Unfortunately, the quest for gold came to an end for Endy and Nino when they lost 10-3 to Morgan Colver and Hallie Hoeflein of Easton in the semifinals.

"It's a nice experience for them and I think it's a good weekend and it's great to see all of these teams, including some of them that we haven't played," said coach Meredith Kester. "I felt that we came out pretty determined to do well. My number two and three singles both had a tough draw and played very tough opponents in the first round."

Whitehall's Christina Endy (number-two singles) and Emily Yenser (number-three singles) both lost first round matches to opponents who were seeded much higher and went all the way to the finals, where they were both defeated. The doubles teams of Shadimon Navarro and Celine Asmar (number-two doubles) and Kali Bartynski and Nicole Peluso (number-four doubles) were both upset in their first round matches.

The win by Endy and Nino over Nazareth was a payback for a regular season match that saw the Nazareth duo down them in three sets a couple of weeks earlier.

"Going into team districts, it gives them a confidence boost, definitely. It also encourages them that even though they've lost to a team during the season, there's an element of redemption and a little bit of encouragement that they can come back and do well against those teams," Kester explained.

Whitehall has one final regular season match against Parkland, but at 9-4 on the season and currently ranked seventh in the District 11 Power Point Rankings, the Lady Zephyrs have likely done enough to make it to team districts, which begin next week.

"Our goal is team districts and our season's not over, but we're still working towards that," said Kester. "Our goal, always, at Whitehall is to be deep to insure that our four doubles can handle match play just as easily as our number-one singles player. We frequently don't have the top singles players in the district, but we like to do the best that we can throughout our lineup. We've won a lot of close matches with our doubles and that was one of our goals throughout the season."