Lafayette High School sophomore Caroline Pozo has been showing her skills on the tennis court since she was 4 years old. While it started out as just a fun activity, it already has evolved into an impressive high school career. Pozo went undefeated this season in singles, and she and her doubles partner, Abby Carpenter, lost only one match. She also won the singles Class 2 State Championship. When asked about how it feels not to have lost a single match, Pozo plays it down. “It feels great, but I was always just focused on one match at a time, which makes it easier,” she says.
She accomplished both her goals going into the season: to win state (she placed second last year as a freshman) and to beat a fellow competitor after losing the match against her as a freshman. It’s obvious Pozo has a competitive streak and is always striving to do better. “I think my favorite part of the game is figuring out how to beat the other person, the logistics of it all,” she says. “You have to figure out what you’re doing wrong each match and what you can do to win.”
Since the high school tennis season just ended, Pozo will now focus on her league through the Missouri Athletic Club, which she has been involved with for almost a year. “Through the MAC, I play in the Missouri Valley league, which covers Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa and Nebraska,” she explains. The players ranked high enough in their league compete at Nationals, which Pozo attended over the summer in California. Simply put, she says it was a ton of fun. In fact, ‘fun’ is a word that comes up often when the 15-year-old describes why she loves tennis. “It’s an interesting sport that requires a lot of focus,” she says. “I’m really looking forward to playing in college; that’s another one of my goals.”