Recap
San Juan Capistrano, CA — There was some excellent tennis played today, the JV team almost pulled off an upset after losing earlier in the season at Crean Lutheran. Coach had the score wrong on the big board, we actually were down 7-8 and needed the last 2 sets in order to win the match, but (simultaneous) split finishes left us 1 set short.
First, MVP honors and kudos to the only 2 players who won 100% of their sets played today: Kai Woessner and Michael Woodward! Kai teamed with Sean Do in the first round for a pretty EZ 6-2 win before getting on the train to San Diego. Michael fought back from 1-4 to force a tie-breaker, which he eventually won 11-9. Close matches are rarely won when line #3 singles and doubles don’t win in the opening round. These 2 wins were huge as we took a 5-1 lead going into the 2nd round of play.
MVP honors also (and welcome back!) to Luke Krolikowski, who had back to back 7-5 wins, the 2nd one coming back from a 0-4 deficit. Luke has been helping out the Varsity team in the last few dual matches, but will be competing in the JV league tournament Wednesday as the #3 seed.
MVP honors as well to the doubles team of Max Chiotis and Peter Zhang who won 2 of 3 sets played today. Peter stayed after 7th period PE to help us out as we were initially short handed. Teaming up for the first time in a live match is not EZ to do, but these guys performed like seasoned doubles partners - well played!
Parker Gibson and Kenny Perez each got additional sets in singles - Kenny in a long first round set 6-4, and Parker under pressure in the last set of the afternoon.
Their coach, Abbey, agreed to combining 2 of the last 3 singles sets into 1 singles and 1 doubles, in which our top 2 singles players (Kenney and Luke) played their top 2 players in a hybrid doubles set. This sped the match up a bit, also gave our guys a break before their all day tournament on Wednesday. More importantly, it was a tight, well played set with some exciting points.
That’s it for dual matches guys. Good luck in the Trinity League tournament and we’ll see you all at the team banquet next Monday. Thanks for a great season!