Niwot junior ace Sahasra Kolli served with her left hand in a few matches this past spring season, though her dominant hand is her right.

The Cougars’ No. 1 singles player said she had to alter her game while playing through an elbow injury she reaggravated right before the season. Then had to change her playing style again later in the season after hurting her foot in a freak accident at her home.

Despite it, Kolli made it all the way to the Class 4A individual championship match, where she fell to Kent Denver senior Lila Moldenhauer across two tight sets.

“That just shows how talented she is,” Niwot coach Aimee Hites said of the resilient Longmont Times-Call girls tennis player of the year. “Most players wouldn’t be able to do that.”

Needing so many matches to qualify for postseason play, Kolli said her initial injury — a bout of “tennis elbow” which she’d dealt with the season before — stripped away her power, forcing her to lean more heavily on her legs.

When she began feeling better from it a few weeks later, she suffered a nerve injury in her foot after she got dizzy one day at home and fell down some stairs. When she returned from a brief absence in the wake of it, her mobility was now the issue.

“When I hurt my arm, the new strategy was to run a lot more,” Kolli said. “And then when I hurt my leg, I couldn’t do that. So, I had to go back to my old playing style. Just ending points quickly.”

Kolli, who won the No. 2 singles title as a freshman and improved in her second season at No. 1s, despite everything, went on to win a regional title in the spring, which qualified her for the individual state tournament, where she dropped just four games in three matches as part of a dominant march to the finals.

In the championship, she led Moldenhauer 5-3 in both the first and second sets. The senior rallied to win, however, 7-5, 7-5.

“That’ll be motivation for next season,” Kolli said.

Kolli was great in the team dual postseason, too. She beat both Thompson Valley’s Miranda Spooner and Air Academy’s Ava Martin, winning 24 of the 25 games played. The Cougars, however, bowed out in 4A’s second round, falling to the Kadets, 5-2.“Her game is solid,” Hites said. “I think it’s just about her getting healthy. But her game is awesome. There’s nothing in her game I’d want her to change.”

Kolli, with a high school GPA of 4.63 heading into her senior year, is still deciding her college plans. She said she’s thinking about New York University to study business. But it’s early in the process.

“I was thinking that tennis recruiting could help me get in,” she said. “So, I’m thinking I need to get a little bit better. Maybe make a video to show coaches and do all that kind of (recruiting) stuff.”

A break is needed first.

“I have time to rest now that it’s summer,” she said. “Since I’ll be applying for colleges, I’ll just be focusing on that instead.”