Three years apart in age, Haylie and Chelsie Rayl have only this season to be teammates on the Franklin girls tennis team.
The sisterly chemistry they possess has been evident on the court as doubles partners.
Haylie, a senior, and Chelsie, a freshman, take a 13-1 record at No. 1 doubles into today’s match at Waldron after winning all three of their matches at the Grizzly Cubs’ invitational on Saturday.
As a freshman, Haylie rotated into the lineup at No. 2 doubles; she was mostly the Cubs’ No. 2 singles player in 2019 before her junior season was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Actually, my junior year I was supposed to play No. 1 doubles with one of the other girls on our team, Emma Genter, and that would have been a good team,” Haylie said. “I was looking forward to playing doubles, so when that got canceled, it was really sad.”
With Genter graduating last spring, Haylie needed a partner and proposed the idea to Chelsie. The latter was receptive to the idea of playing doubles, but only if she could do it with her older sister.
That isn’t to say their thoughts during competition aren’t occasionally vocalized. During a match at Plainfield, Chelsie yelled at her sister for mishitting a shot — though she later apologized.
“Sometimes she gets on my nerves. She did something dumb, and so I yelled her name,” said Chelsie, laughing. “This season has been … interesting. I like it, though, for the most part.”
Added Haylie: “Neither one of us are afraid to tell the other when they mess up. We’re sisters, so it’s pretty easy.”
The siblings remained undefeated all the way up to the championship match of the Mid-State Conference tournament earlier this month at Perry Meridian.
After a hard-earned 6-3, 7-5 victory over Greenwood’s Sophia Davidson and Brooklyn Hanson in the opening round, the Rayls coasted through the semis before dropping a third-set tiebreaker to Camille Clark and Emma Kessinger of Plainfield.
Next week, Franklin is at the Center Grove Sectional, which will be held on one of three courts where the Rayl sisters won matches during the Johnson County tournament. Three of the sectional participants are ranked among the state’s top 30 teams — Center Grove is seventh, the Grizzly Cubs 20th and Whiteland 30th.
After graduating from Franklin, Haylie Rayl, who is ranked third in her class academically with a 4.42 grade-point average, will attend Arizona State University, where she plans to major in aerospace engineering.
“I’ve got some relatives out there and just love the state of Arizona,” Haylie said. “My uncle’s out there, I have a cousin out there. And the climate was really a deciding factor.”
Until then, the sisters Rayl will continue to make the most of their lone varsity season together.
“They want to play together, which is the biggest factor. You don’t want to force anyone to play doubles with somebody else,” Franklin coach Rusty Hughes said. “It’s really hard to come out and play doubles and play it the right way when you’ve been predominantly singles players, but they’ve done a great job.”
