A minor accident caused serious problems for the varsity girls’ tennis team when a textbook dropped on Arin Schwimmer’s ’15 toe, relegating her to the sidelines of the team’s matches in both the first and second rounds of CIF.
While the Wolverines managed to beat Viewpoint 16-2 in the first round, they fell 7-11 to Tesoro on Nov. 2 in the second round of CIF playoffs only four days after sweeping the Mission League in the team, singles and doubles championships.
“The doubles was where we definitely faultered because [Schwimmer] wasn’t here. We wanted three really strong doubles teams, but the risk was that none of them had really played together,” co-captain Kristina Park ’13 said. “It could have worked or not worked, but it didn’t really work out and none of us performed up to our abilities. Everyone was having a bad day.”
The Wolverines had the distinction of playing themselves in both the singles and doubles championships at Mission League Finals on Oct. 29.
Julia Goldberg ’16 beat team co-captain Savannah de Montesquiou ’13 to be named Mission League singles champion, while Sophie Gunter ’14 and Park defeated Schwimmer and Paige Moelis ’15 in the battle for doubles champion.
“It was really exciting. I didn’t really expect to win it. I just tried my best and I went in playing loose,” Goldberg said.
With last week’s championship, the girls’ varsity tennis program took home the Mission League team title for the 12th time in the last 13 years. Even so, the loss to Tesoro insured that they would not break another less winsome streak: that of not having advanced past CIF quarterfinals since 2001.
“I expected us to go a lot deeper, to the semis or quarters at least,” Goldberg said.
Prior to the Tesoro match, the team was 17-1 on the season with a perfect 10-0 record in league. Wins against CIF-ranked Santa Barbara and Palos Verdes had them ranked fifth in CIF Division 1.
Tesoro was not in the top 10. A win against Tesoro would have advanced the Wolverines to CIF quarterfinals, where they would have played Peninsula on Monday.
Incidentally, Peninsula, ranked fourth in CIF, handed the team its only other loss this season when the Wolverines played them back on Sept. 12.
“Peninsula was waiting for us in the quarters. The top four are just untouchable. If we hadn’t gotten out Friday, it would have been Monday,” Head Coach Chris Simpson said.
There is a silver lining, though. The top two in Mission League singles and doubles move on to the Nov. 19 regional CIF qualifiers, meaning Goldberg, de Montesquiou and the doubles teams of Gunter and Park and Schwimmer and Moelis will have the chance to redeem their team’s early exit.
“Since I’m a freshman I’m just going to try my best to win a couple of rounds, and maybe get to the round of 16 if I play really well,” Goldberg said. “Having Savannah there will help me through it, like she’ll know where to go to warm up. It’s perfect, both of us are in it together and we’re going to do pretty well as a team.”
“I don’t really have any expectations, especially because all of these teams are really good when you get to those rounds. I am expecting we’ll probably win the first or second round, but we’ll just play it by ear and see how far we go,” Park said.
“Regionals won’t be easy because a lot of the top teams put their top singles players into doubles teams,” Simpson said. “Our doubles girls are the same doubles girls we’ve played. They’re not top singles players. They can really only get as far as they can. Hopefully we’ll get a good draw and they’ll get through a couple of rounds.”
