After winning a state title last year, the Tupelo tennis team is setting out to do it all over again.

Tupelo is off to a 3-0 start to the season after a 7-0 win over Southaven on Tuesday, although the Golden Wave will be tested with matches against Ocean Springs and Madison Central this week.

“We started off with good results to start the year,” Tupelo head coach Payton Pearce said. “Had good wins over New Albany and Oxford. Yesterday, we played our first division match where we played Southaven. Kind of a weird thing that happened in that match that we don’t see very often is we won every court 6-0, 6-0 across the varsity and junior varsity, so it was a really, really good outing from our team.”

Tupelo has a core of experienced players among its boys, led by Land Magruder. For the girls, Tupelo lost much of its title-winning group, and the Golden Wave are also a little shorthanded right now, as some players are also playing on Tupelo’s girls soccer team. That means there have been a lot of new faces but also plenty of opportunity.

“Land Magruder is back for us, he’ll lead the way for us,” Pearce said. “... We’ve got a good group of core guys between Wes Henson, Sam Ueltschey, Whit Harbour that play a lot of matches for us and have in the previous years.”

“We lost five out of the six (girls) that played for us in the state championship,” Pearce added. “They all graduated. For the girls that are currently playing for us right now, for a lot of them it’s their first opportunities at varsity matches.”

Off and running

Ace Hall’s high school career got off to a fast start in the most literal sense.

The Starkville freshman made his varsity debut last Thursday at the Starkville Season Opener meet, winning the 100-meter dash with a time of 11.02 seconds. Hall’s showing came as little surprise to Yellow Jacket head coach Tory Reeves.

“I kind of knew he had some really good potential,” Reeves said. “We had him in indoor, and he ran over in Birmingham and ran a couple of good (60-yard dashes). I kept up with him in middle school, keeping up with his progress, and I could see he was going to have a lot of potential. Right out the gate, first meet, lower 11s – that was really impressive.”

While Hall is young, he has already developed a solid approach to running. Reeves hasn’t had to make any major changes to Hall’s technique or running style.

“He had some good stuff he was already doing, but we worked on some things like relaxing a little bit. Because I tell him all the time, a loose muscle’s a lot quicker than a tight, tense muscle,” Reeves said. “… He hadn’t had a lot of block work, and when you’re doing sprints, you can win or lose a race coming out of those blocks. He’s done a lot of reps of getting out of those blocks quicker, and that shaved a little bit of time for him.”

With a full high school career still ahead of him, Hall has the potential to do some special things. Reeves said the key to that will be continuing to work, and he believes Hall has the required makeup it takes to keep improving.

“He’s there every day, and he’s putting in the time, so I can really see, if he keeps that up, him getting in those mid-10s and, dare I say, the low 10s. That’s special territory there.”

Tupelo opens playoffs

The first round of the MHSAA basketball playoffs tips off this weekend for both of Tupelo’s teams.

The girls will host Oxford on Friday, while the boys will entertain Murrah on Saturday in Class 7A action. Tupelo’s girls (19-6), who have won two straight state titles, are the No. 1 seed out of Region 1-7A and have won their last 10 games. The boys, with a 17-7 record, are a No. 2 seed.

While this weekend marks the opening round for Classes 5A through 7A, it will be the second round for 1A through 4A.