GRANITEQUARRY — East Rowan’s tennis team has three Ashleys, two losses and one goal — making the state playoffs.

“To make the playoffs again — it’s something we talk about a lot,” says senior Whitney Hammer, who’s making the most of her first chance in the starting rotation. “It’s been a whole lot of hard work to get to where we are.”

Where the Mustangs are is 4-2 in the South Piedmont Conference after Wednesday’s 9-0 home blowout of A.L. Brown. To make the 3A state dual team playoffs for the eighth consecutive time, East has to finish in the top three in its nine-team league.

“The big one for us is at Concord on Monday,” says coach Worth Roberts, the low-key veteran who’s in his 18th year of directing the Mustangs. “It’s all in our hands now.”

If East beats Concord and also wins as expected against last-place Sun Valley, it’ll finish up 6-2 in the league. That would put East back in the playoffs along with the SPC’s top dog Northwest Cabarrus and No. 2 West Rowan, whose only league loss is to the Trojans.

“I think for this year’s team to make the state playoffs, that would just be a crowning blow,” says a smiling Roberts.

There’s no doubt Roberts has done one of his best coaching jobs. It’s been an obvious rebuilding year for the Mustangs, whose only returning regulars are No. 1 Ashley Hayden and No. 2 Ashley Burleson, who played at 3 and 5 last year. But the team has gotten surprisingly strong play from seniors Hammer and Elizabeth Gegorek and solid efforts from youngsters Ashley Wells, Brandi Weddington, Christy Baker and Whitney Alexander. And now East is on the edge of continuing a tradition of excellence that would get more attention if the Salisbury dynasty wasn’t just a few miles up the road.

“No one thought we’d be a good team this year,” says Hayden. “But we’ve been able to stay in games and we’ve pulled a lot of them out.”

The most spectacular of the “pulling outs” came last Thursday against Harding.

“The way we started, I was thinking, ‘Oh gosh, we’re not going to be in this one at all,’” said Roberts.

Making matters even more dicey was the fact that East wasn’t going to have Burleson for doubles. “We knew Ashley would only be there for singles,” Roberts said. “After that, she was headed to the county fair to show a lamb.”

But East survived singles 3-3. Then with some brand new doubles combinations, East escaped 5-4. Hammer and Weddington teamed up to win the decisive 10-8 thriller at No. 3.

“If we’d lost that match, we were done in as far as the playoffs,” said Roberts.

Yesterday was far less stressful. The Wonders have given fourth-year coach Mark Linn the first three victories of his career this fall, but this time he was missing his No. 1, Haley Huie (due to a chemistry project). East didn’t break a sweat, losing only four games in 12 sets of singles.

“Still,” laughed the affable Linn, “we’ve broken the glass this year. And the girls have had a great time.”

So have those surprising Mustangs.