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GREENSBORO — At the end of a long school day near the end of what is becoming a long and tragic school year at Page, a group of students gathered at the tennis courts to hold a service, pay respects to a friend and begin the process of healing that comes after the loss of a fellow student.

They played a tennis match in memory of Brooks Ferrell late Tuesday afternoon.

They played because they felt like Brooks would've done the same thing.

Page won the match and will now move on in the state tennis playoffs. The rest of the Page student body will eventually move on, too. But not before yet another grieving process that is almost too painful for words.

That's how tennis coach Jason Allen put it. What he and his team felt Tuesday was almost too much to describe.

Ferrell, 18, was a senior member of the tennis team. He'd been missing since last week when authorities found his car underwater in the Country Park lake Monday evening.

"It's been a tough day," Allen said. "It's been a tough couple of weeks here at Page."

T.J. Todd, 20, died last week after being shot coming out of a party during the school's spring break. Todd was a 2010 Page graduate.

"This is something that has affected the entire student body," athletics director Rusty Lee said. "They all might not have known T.J. and they might not all have known Brooks. But between the two, every single person has been touched."

He said there was some discussion that Tuesday's match shouldn't be played. But the decision was left to those who knew Ferrell best.

"It wasn't something we even thought about," sophomore tennis player Warren Bryan said. "We wanted to play. We knew Brooks would want us to play. We didn't even have to talk about it. We just knew."

And so they played.

On a windy afternoon in the first round of the state 4-A tennis playoffs, Page defeated Lake Norman High School 5-3.

"This is the largest crowd I've seen at a tennis match," Lee said as the match began. "I think this says something about the school. There are a lot of students here, and there are some parents and there are some counselors here, too. We don't really know how the kids will react."

They did fine. They were surrounded by friends and family. Several teachers, including former tennis coach Bruce Lanier came down the hill to watch. He said, like many who leaned up against the fence to watch the matches, he felt like he needed to be there.

"Brooks was one of those kids everybody liked," Lanier said. "He was a cheerful kid, one of the players all the others wanted to be around."

When word leaked out the day before that a car had been found at the park, a number of students went there, too. The pain of that scene and the reality that the school was going through still another tragedy seemed to hang over the community Tuesday. Students were somber, many of them wearing black ribbons, as they walked from the school parking lots to the tennis courts after class.

The teams lined up along the baselines before the match, and the lineups for both Page and Lake Norman were announced. The players stood still as Lee asked for a moment of silence. The players removed their hats, some of them adjusting the black wristbands and small black ribbons they wore in honor of a missing teammate.

They stood as a team, alone with their thoughts probably for the first time. Then they all looked each other and gathered in a tight circle, wishing each other good luck. One of the players yelled "Go Pirates!"

And then they played tennis.

"Brooks was really a good guy," Bryan said afterward. "He was hilarious. He was a riot. We knew we were going to play today because we knew Brooks wanted us to. This has been like a dream. It wasn't real. It was like, Brooks can't be gone. It was hard today, but once we started we just played tennis. If anything, thinking about Brooks made us play harder. This was for him."

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com