Girls’ Tennis: Peninsula too strong
ROLLING HILLS ESTATES — It was a special year in 2013 for the Peninsula High girls’ tennis team.
The Panthers captured the CIF Southern Section Division 1 team title, as well as the Southern California Regional crown. Ena Shibahara earned a CIF Individuals singles title, and the doubles team of Risa Nakagawa and Sara Khattab were CIF Individuals doubles finalists.
You could call it an embarrassment of riches. And Shibahara, Nakagawa and Khattab are all back this year, with the Panthers also adding two more great singles players.
Can the 2014 Peninsula squad be even better? Coach Mike Hoeger isn’t ready to proclaim that just yet.
“It’s inevitable that people are going to want to know,” Hoeger said. “I guess that’s just something that will have to answer itself ... I just hope that they’re hungry and they don’t get complacent.”
That wasn’t a problem on Tuesday for the top-ranked team in Division 1.
Peninsula dominated visiting Corona del Mar, 15-3, in a nonleague match that was a rematch of last year’s Division 1 semifinals.
Tuesday’s score was the same as the teams’ postseason meeting last year. Shibahara easily swept in singles, as did highly-ranked No. 2 freshman Ryan Peus and No. 3 Alana Roth, for Peninsula (5-0), which handed Corona del Mar (6-1) its first loss of the season.
Kenadi Hance, a top senior who was home-schooled the last two years, did not attend the match. Hoeger said she was on the UCLA campus talking to the Bruins coaches, but it didn’t matter.
“You know, they have a super singles lineup, even missing one player,” CdM Coach Brian Ricker said. “This is one of the better teams I’ve seen in 15 years of [coaching] girls’ tennis. I would kind of compare this team to Uni’s boys’ team, when they had Gage [Brymer], [Stefan] Menichella and Tyler Lu. And [Peninsula’s] No. 1 doubles team is very, very good.”
Nakagawa (a Georgetown commit) and Khattab did easily sweep at No. 1 doubles. In doing so, they handed the CdM doubles teams of Riley Gerdau and Siena Sharf, as well as Taylor Fogarty and Camellia Edalat, their first losses of the season.
Gerdau and Sharf lost twice, also falling, 7-5, to Peninsula’s No. 2 team of Tia Elpusan and Sarina Liu, which also swept.
“We were cruising so easily that maybe this will help us get better,” Ricker said. “I feel like [Gerdau and Sharf] got sucked in a little bit to just rallying cross-court with girls who have really good ground strokes. Their game is to be even more aggressive, so we were able to talk about that.”
CdM was behind, 5-1, after the first round, but had a chance to make it more competitive. It actually could have been 3-3. But Peus outlasted CdM’s Jasie Dunk, 7-5, at No. 2 singles, while Elpusan and Liu beat Fogarty and Edalat by the same score.
“In some odd way, that might have been good for us,” Hoeger said. “It’s the first match this year where we haven’t been up 6-0. In our huddle, we said, ‘We really need a big second round.’ I think this Corona team is better than last year. The singles are stronger, and the doubles are always good with Corona.”
CdM earned its three set wins by sweeping Peninsula at No. 3 doubles.
The Sea Kings, ranked No. 4 in Division 1, open Pacific Coast League play at Irvine on Friday. They certainly have things to work on with three big matches coming up. They play host to No. 5-ranked Santa Barbara on Saturday at noon. The Sea Kings beat the Dons in the championship match of the California Tennis Classic earlier this month.
Then CdM plays at Los Alamitos (No. 7 in Division 1) on Oct. 1, before playing host to league rival University (No. 2) the next day.
Fogarty said that the Sea Kings will take positives from Tuesday’s tough loss.
“It’s good to have a challenging match, because we got to see how good we actually are,” Fogarty said. “Everyone played their hardest ... I think it’s only going to help us get better.”
