Lyndsay Cooke certainly didn’t make things easy on herself. She had finished as the Central Section’s girls tennis runner-up for each of the past two seasons, agonizingly close to the top, and her senior year at Bakersfield Christian was her last chance at No. 1.
But, instead of spending hours and hours on court, Cooke — a well-rounded student who excels in the classroom, in sports and in the arts — took a job as a camp counselor on Catalina Island.
There were no tennis courts.
“I didn’t play the whole entire summer,” said Cooke, The Californian’s Girls Tennis Singles Player of the Year for the third time. “So at the start of the season, getting going and getting back into it, I didn’t have a lot of confidence.”
But when she returned to Bakersfield, BCHS coach Frank Thiessen had a printout from bakersfield.com that asked if Cooke would be able to conquer Gabrielle Gatewood, the Visalia-Redwood player who had beaten her in both finals, in her last chance.
“She said, ‘Coach, don’t worry. We’ll get it this year,’” Thiessen said. “But I worried about it. She was so close, especially two years ago, when she won the first set and was 4-all in the second. I didn’t know if she’d ever come back and do it. But she’ll battle you.”
And Cooke did battle. Even without being in tennis shape, she got through the highly competitive California Tennis Classic in Clovis with just one loss. Her next challenge was the Lewis Cup, where she said she turned a corner in a 6-4, 6-2 victory over another of Kern County’s top players, Garces freshman Gracie Jacobs.
“That was my first hard match I was playing well in,” Cooke said. “It was a battle of minds, a lot of will power to win that match. That was a turning point for me.”
From there, Cooke and the Eagles breezed through their South Sequoia League schedule. Between Lyndsay and her sister, Chelby Cooke, who had an undefeated regular season at No. 2 singles, and The Californian’s Doubles Team of the Year, Lily Schuler and Carolyn Stevens, the Eagles had a juggernaut. Schuler and Stevens finished fourth in the section in doubles.
That left only one obstacle left for Cooke to hurdle: The one that had caught her the previous two years.
She had a relatively easy time getting to the semifinals, where she dispatched Jacobs again. In the other semifinal, Chelby took out Gatewood when the defending champion retired from a close match with a back injury.
“Chelby was the one really after (Gatewood),” Thiessen said. “She was like a little tiger all year. She didn’t care about beating Gabi to play her sister; she was just after Gabi.”
And so, across the net from Lyndsay in her last chance at a championship was the most familiar opponent of all: Little sis.
“We’ve always been each other’s hitting partners, and I definitely would not be where I was without her,” Lyndsay said. “But we would poke fun at each other. She would say, ‘You’re only No. 1 because you’re older,’ just joking around. But we didn’t think about it seriously until we were actually there.”
In a back-and-forth match, it was Lyndsay who out-guiled Chelby that day in Visalia, winning 6-4, 7-5 and finally shedding the bridesmaid’s dress and cementing her legacy as a section champion.
“It was awesome,” she said. “I was really proud of the way I ended.”
Now it’s on to even bigger challenges. Cooke has applied to several elite colleges, including Boston University, Boston College and Brown, and she said she’ll likely play tennis wherever she goes.
“I’m happy, but (high school) is only the first step,” Cooke said. “Hopefully this is a stepping stone to me playing in college. It’s a step in a good direction.”