BY BRETT MARSHALL

DODGE CITY — When Brett Groth assumed the coaching duties for the Dodge City girls tennis team, he was familiar with what his team’s goals would be.

Looming near the end of the regular season was the Western Athletic Conference championship, an event that had been won by rival Garden City for nine consecutive seasons. 

Groth took the reins of the program after serving as an assistant for three seasons to David Snodgrass, who along with his wife Kelley, had moved to the Demons’ rival school where she is now the head girls’ basketball coach.

An experienced team greeted Roth in August, and when the final matches were played in Liberal at the WAC Championship, he and his team celebrated one of their major objectives of the season – WAC Champions!

Groth was voted WAC Coach of the Year by his fellow coaches.

It wasn’t by much as the final score indicates, with the Demons finishing with 11 team points, Great Bend next with 10 and Garden City with 9. 

It was oh so close.

“Our season was quite interesting in many ways. At the beginning it took a while to shake off the dust,” said Groth, who is a Dodge City graduate and former standout for the Demon boys squad. “We have four seniors and two juniors. Throughout the season we just kept getting better.”

In the WAC championship, the format calls for a round-robin where every team plays a match against the other four WAC schools. Points are awarded on each of the four divisions – 2 singles and 2 doubles – and the finish.

“Every match matters,” Groth said. “Sometimes, it comes down to how many you win. I tell the girls to win big, lose small.”

This season at the WAC, it was the two doubles teams that carried the day, but it also was the fact that his No. 1 and 2 singles players went 1-3 and 2-2 to help the overall team point total.

Each of the doubles teams had to win a match by surviving a tiebreaker as the No. 1 team of Marisol Banuelos and Yaremy Macias defeated Great Bend's Brooklyn Reynolds/Baze Hogan 8-7 (7-4), in their final match of the tournament while the No. 2 team of Addisyn Taylor and Emma Bell won its key match in the opening round, an 8-7 (7-3) victory over Garden City's Renly Just/Reese Kennedy, 

“Every team match matters and contributes to who wins,” Groth said. “The early win over Garden gave us some momentum. Once we got a couple of wins, the doubles team just locked in and played well.”

As close as the team points ended up, Groth said he wasn’t surprised.

“We had seen all the teams throughout the season, so we knew it would be competitive,” Groth said. “You just come to the tournament to compete, and the goal is to win the title and we were able to do that.”

Groth believes the WAC championship takes on added importance.

“It’s a combination of things where we know all the other teams well and it’s the conference championship,” Groth said. “It’s always a goal and we’ve been knocking on the door for several years and this is a big one for us.”

Groth said there was just a little added motivation for the Demons this season when Snodgrass moved to Garden City.

“It added some fire for the girls,” Groth said. “They competed for him for several years. After all, it is Dodge City-Garden City. The rivalry is always there.”

The point distribution reflects just how close the three top teams were as Dodge City scored 3 points in singles and 8 points in doubles; Great Bend scored 5 points in both singles and doubles while Garden City’s distribution was 8 in singles and 1 in doubles.

The Lady Buffs swept the two singles divisions with senior Chloe Ptacek winning No. 1 with a 4-0 mark and sophomore Vivian Whitham also going 4-0 to win the No. 2 division.

All winners were named first team all-Western Athletic Conference and Ptacek was voted the WAC Player of the Year.

During her first three years of playing high school tennis, Chloe Ptacek had only played doubles for the Garden City Lady Buffaloes.

That all changed early in the season, even going back to preseason when the Buffs were going through their challenge matches.

The decision was made before the team’s early-season tournament at Wichita Collegiate where Ptacek was in the No. 2 slot and senior teammate Quincy Nanninga occupied the No. 1 position.

After that opening tournament, with a nearly two week break before their next tournament, Nanninga left the team and thus, Ptacek moved up to the No. 1 spot and sophomore Vivian Whitham became the No. 2 singles player.

Nobody could have expected the transition and eventual progress Ptacek would exhibit during the seven weeks of the fall season.

What began as struggles ended on a high note as Ptacek went 4-0 to win the Western Athletic Conference No. 1 singles title and in the process was voted WAC Player of the Year by the coaches.

The early struggles with singles play with a narrower court and no partner to rely on were more the rule than the exception for Ptacek.

“The day of WAC, the weather was very cold and windy (In Liberal) and it seemed like the day was slow-paced,” Ptacek recalled. “We would get a 30-minute break between matches to give you a chance to warm up.”

The round-robin format worked well for Ptacek, having played most of her opponents earlier in the season.

She defeated Katie Rouse of Dodge City in her opening match, 8-4, in what was her closest match of the day (she was 3-0 against Rouse for the season). She then won consecutive 8-2 matches against Delia Dixon of Hays (the first time they had met) and Paige Stacey of Great Bend (won 2 previous matches) and then in the big match of the day, dominated Liberal nemesis Evelin Tarango, 8-1.

It was a breakthrough moment for Ptacek, having lost to Tarango twice before including an 8-7 (3) tiebreaker the week before at the Garden City Invitational.

“It helped that I got a break before that last match,” Ptacek said. “I got to eat and got refueled.”

Having lost those earlier matches, Ptacek and her new coach, David Snodgrass, went to work on perfecting new shots, the biggest one being drop shots that just barely clear the net and die on the court.

“I wanted to move her around on the court as much as possible,” said Ptacek. “She’s a dinker and I wanted to push her off the court. She won’t come to the net, so you’ve got to place the ball in different locations. My serves were better with some of the kicks going up and some going higher and to the left. The variety is what has been much better.”

Making the move from doubles to singles created a lot of strategy changes as well for Ptacek.

“You have to learn how to go to the net and give yourself some variety of shots and learn how to volley,” Ptacek said. “As the season progressed, my approach shots got better. Being out there by yourself becomes a mental challenge. You must understand that if nothing happens, it’s not the end of the world. You just must come back and play again.”

During her final season, Ptacek saw other players where she knew she could compete but was struggling getting the wins early. After four tournaments, she was only at a .500 record of 5-5. When the sixth tournament of the year concluded in McPherson, she was still at a modest 8-7 won-loss mark. 

“I told myself to take more time and focus on what I need to work on to get better,” Ptacek said. “I felt all along I should be doing better.”

Her game plan worked as she went 3-1 at the GCHS Invite before sweeping the WAC in her four victories. The next chapter of her 2025 story came a week later at the Class 6A regionals on her home courts where she repeated a 4-0 performance to claim the regional title and advance to the state tournament on Oct. 17-18 in Olathe.

Her record heading into her final high school tournament – 19-8 – winning her final nine matches.

The commitment and hard work had paid off. And in this case, maybe more than Ptacek could ever have envisioned.

SINGLES—No. 1 Garden City's Chloe Ptack, 4-0; No. 2 Garden City's Vivian Whitham, 4-0

DOUBLES—No. 1 Dodge City's Marisol Banuelos/Yaremy Macias, 4-0; No. 2 Dodge City's Addisyn Taylor/Emma Bell, 4-0

PLAYER OF YEAR —Chloe Ptacek, Garden City

COACH OF YEAR —Brett Groth, Dodge City