Mercer Island High School’s girls tennis team continues to tear up the court this season by notching the 3A KingCo tournament championship on May 10.

The Islanders, who won the 3A/4A KingCo Crest Division regular-season championship, received a second consecutive first-place finish at the tourney from the Garton sisters’ doubles team of senior Rachel and sophomore Sarah.

Also on May 10, the Islander doubles squad of junior Mia Kinney and sophomore Jayne Tintle took second and freshman Caitlynn Ying placed third in singles.

Both doubles teams and Ying all advance to the 3A SeaKing District 2 tourney from May 13-14 at Lower Woodland in Seattle.

It’s go time in the postseason again for the Islanders, who won the state team title last spring along with netting the league and district crowns last season.

In the league realm this year, MI and Newport both garnered 9-1 records, and the Islanders took the first-place spot with 54 individual overall wins to the second-placer’s 53. MI was 12-1 overall in matches prior to the KingCo tourney.

The Garton sisters, who are the reigning 3A state doubles champions, play smart and strategic and are students of the game, according to head coach Jacquie Hartmann.

“The goal is to win (state) again. They just have an invaluable synergy that comes from being sisters,” she said.

Also on the doubles front, Kinney and Tintle possess a combination of experience and enthusiasm, said Hartmann, adding that Kinney took third at state doubles last year alongside her sister Violet.

“Even though they’re a new partnership, they were incredibly strong and hard to beat,” Hartmann said of the Kinney-Tintle duo that finished 9-1 in league.

Ying, who plays tournament tennis year round, brings mental strength and experience to the court as the Islanders’ No. 1 singles player, Hartmann said.

Hartmann praised her co-captains Rachel Garton and junior Audrey Goodman for guiding the experienced team, which features eight juniors (all three-year varsity players) out of 14 Islanders on the roster.

“The team has grown up playing together on the Island, and now in high school. It’s just been, once again, vital to have that continuity for the high school team. Even though we’re in a much more difficult league with this multi-divisional classification, we thrived,” said Hartmann, adding that the team displayed grit, determination, care and camaraderie this season.

Also contributing points to the team championship were Goodman, Tiphenn Dumont, Audrey Tintle and Kara Hillberg. Alternates Sophia Pae, Jordan Flume, Avery Rogers and Sydney Parcel played crucial roles in helping the team practice, warm up and cheer the players on to win their matches, Hartmann said.

“This is an entire team win,” Hartmann said of winning the two titles this season. “It takes a deep team like ours to make this happen. We have strength all the way through our ladder and great competition every day in practice. No team can win like this without it.”

Joining Hartmann in the coaching sphere this season is Island tennis standout Shelley Whelan, who was inducted into the Intercollegiate Tennis Association Women’s Hall of Fame in 2024 for her stellar NCAA Division III performances for Pomona College in California.

“She is a phenomenal coach and has led our player development this year. To have her on our coaching team is unbelievable,” Hartmann said.

Next up for Rachel Garton will be NCAA Division III tennis at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. In the classroom, she plans to focus her studies on biology, chemistry and economics.

For the Garton sisters, their chemistry was solid in their doubles matches during the KingCo tournament. Rachel said that while playing singles during the regular season before transitioning into doubles, her strengths were her mental toughness when serving and staying in the moment during each match.

When asked what the best piece of advice she’s received during her years of playing tennis and attending school on the Island, Rachel noted:

“My dad likes to say, ‘The harder I work, the luckier I seem to get.’ In school and sports, kind of live by appreciating hard work. I would say I work hard in different aspects of life, and it seems like hard work usually does pay off. So I think just kind of putting the work in and trying to improve different aspects of the game will be very helpful in college, in school and in life.”