Girls tennis team perfect in district

The Portales girls tennis team wrapped up a perfect District 4-3A season, holding off New Mexico Military Institute 4-1 Monday at the Bill Wahlman Tennis Complex Monday .

Portales (15-2) won two of three singles flights and both doubles flights. The matches were closer than the final score indicated, as Jessica Bulls and Kaycee Quick needed three sets to win in No. 1 doubles match and Portales’ No. 2 doubles team of Bethany Self and Kassandra Short needed a tiebreaker to claim a two-set victory.

Rachelle Self and Morgan Erf won easily in No. 2 and No. 3 singles, respectively, while Daneila Renovales scored a 6-3, 6-0 win over Hailey Quick in No. 1 singles for NMMI’s only victory on the day.

The NMMI boys will face Portales today, with matches starting at 3 p.m. at the Bill Wahlman Tennis Complex. The girls will next play at home against Clovis on Thursday.

Girls golf team struggles

An off day cost the Portales girls golf team a chance of qualifying for the Class 3A state tournament Monday at Artesia.

Cassidy Merrick led Portales with a 98, while Roni Gomez shot 106. Oma Creighton had a score of 108, and Michelle Miller rounded out the scoring at 110. But the Lady Rams missed its third state qualifying mark by seven strokes.

Portales has six more tournaments to earn its final qualifying score, but the bad performance was still unnerving to coach Brenda Gomez.

“I’m just a little concerned that we are not improving like we should,” Gomez said. “Scores should be going down just a little bit with each tournament. We really need to be getting better.”

There were no such worries for the boys, who won the tournament by one shot over Goddard with a team score of 307.

Portales senior Kevin Welch finished second with a 72, three shots ahead of teammate Chris Adkins (75) in third.

Portales coach Greg Poynor said it was the second individual qualifying score for Adkins, but the team has already qualified for the state tournament.

Portales’ team score was 20 strokes better than the qualifying score.

Trevor Ferguson shot 79, Dale Welch 80 and Matt Parkey had an 87 for Portales.