Alice High tennis banquet honors Coyotes for strong season

Alice High School’s tennis program closed the season with a banquet that did more than hand out recognition. It put a spotlight on a Coyotes year that produced district medals, consolation wins and the kind of depth that gives a small-school program real momentum in Jim Wells County.

In a school of about 1,290 students serving grades 9 through 12 in Alice ISD, a tennis banquet carries extra weight because the sport often lives outside the loudest parts of campus life. The gathering gave players in burnt orange and white a chance to be seen for the work that happens long before match day, from practice courts to district travel and the pressure of representing Alice, Texas, in University Interscholastic League play.

The season’s most visible milestones came at the district level. Anna Teixeira earned a third-place medal at the District 31-4A tournament, a result that showed Alice could compete for hardware not just in the varsity bracket but across the program. Gavin Sendejo and Juan Canales added another bright spot by winning boys doubles consolation, a finish that mattered in a tournament format where every round can become a measure of how far a player has come. Freshmen and junior varsity Coyotes also logged time at the district meet, another sign that the roster was not built around a single class of athletes.

That depth is part of what the banquet recognized. Team honors in a season like this often mean more than a trophy on a table. They reflect leadership, improvement and the players who held the lineup together through a long spring. For Alice, those honors also underscored a broader truth about the program: the Coyotes were not only competing, they were building. With UIL team tennis brackets divided by conference and region, district success is the first real marker that a program is moving in the right direction, and Alice’s results suggested that the foundation was getting stronger.

The banquet brought that story home for families, classmates and alumni who follow the school closely. Alice High tennis ended the year with a clear message: the season belonged to a team that earned its recognition and put itself in position to do even more next year.