Girls’ Tennis: Sailors improve, but fall
Los Alamitos High girls’ tennis coach Kevin Garrett notices a difference between the two times his Griffins play Newport Harbor in the Sunset League.
“They’re always more competitive here [at home],” Garrett said. “I don’t know if it’s true for everyone else, but it’s certainly true for us.”
Maybe it was the home-court advantage. Maybe it was that the Sailors got that much better in the nearly three weeks since they were humbled, 16-2, by Los Alamitos in the league opener Sept. 25.
Newport Harbor gave Los Alamitos a much better fight Tuesday afternoon at the Sailors’ courts.
It just wasn’t enough to come out with a win.
Los Alamitos started strong and earned a 12-6 victory in a match finished under the lights. The Griffins (7-2, 6-0 in league), trying for their third straight outright league title, tightened their hold on first place with four league matches remaining.
Newport Harbor (9-5, 4-2) stays in second place, the spot in which it has finished the last two years. But the Sailors, who earned just one singles set and one doubles set the first time the rivals played this season, definitely improved their play.
Freshman Nicole Knickerbocker was the Sailor to win multiple sets, at No. 2 singles. She topped Los Al senior Caroleen Fararji, 6-2, then rallied for a 6-4 win over Hailey Hairrell in the last round.
Sailors junior Jenn Kingsley also defeated Hairrell by the same score. And the Sailors’ doubles teams of Courtney Howarth and Elle Zielinski, Kendall Cosenza and Anna Burke, as well as Annie LaGrandeur and Olivia Zehnder, all easily topped the Griffins’ No. 2 doubles team.
“It looked like a completely different match than when we played them the first round [of league], which is exactly what we wanted,” Newport Harbor Coach Kristen Case said. “The first time we played them, I still thought we played well, yet I knew we could do better ... Coming into this match, they were well-prepared, they were confident and they were ready to battle. They were definitely ready to play today, and it showed.
“Obviously we won a lot of sets than we did last time, but even the sets that were our losses today, I felt like those were such outstanding matches from our players. That’s really motivating, moving forward into the second round of league. Everybody all across the board has improved dramatically.”
Los Alamitos, ranked No. 6 in CIF Southern Section Division 1, jumped out to a 5-1 lead after the first round. But there were a couple of close set wins in there. Fararji rallied from a 4-2 deficit to top Kingsley, 6-4, and Sydney Bott and Erika Cheng worked hard for a 6-3 victory over LaGrandeur and Zehnder.
The teams each won three sets in the second round, so the Griffins didn’t clinch the match until midway through the third round. They did get an easy sweep from senior Jennifer Lu, who was last year’s league champion. And the Griffins also got doubles sweeps from Aliya Alenikov and Hope Hairrell, as well as Bott and Cheng, who won league last year.
LaGrandeur, a Newport co-captain with Howarth, said the Sailors have gotten more competitive because of the intense practices they’ve had recently.
“We knew what we wanted to do second round [of league], and that was to improve immensely,” LaGrandeur said. “I think really zoning in on that pushed us to be that much better. We really focused on specifics during practice, and didn’t come out just to hit balls. We came out with a purpose, and I think that really helped us improve.”
Newport Harbor has three league matches remaining before a big league finale against Fountain Valley, at home on Oct. 27. The Sailors can likely clinch outright second place in league by winning. They edged the Barons on games, 9-9 (72-65), in the teams’ first meeting last week.
Case said that the Sailors, who play at Marina on Thursday, aren’t overlooking anyone.
“I absolutely love the rotation this year, and how we’re setting up to play the teams,” Case said. “Hat’s off to Los Al. They’re an incredible team this year, and playing them first in [each round of league] is a blessing for us. It gives us the opportunity to learn, it gives us the opportunity to lift our games and see what we’re capable of. And, it gives us the motivation moving forward to dig deeper and completely capitalize on what we are capable of.
“If we can keep going in the direction that we are going in, I will just be so incredibly proud of this group, because all of their hard work and their dedication is totally paying off.”
Howarth is one player who doesn’t expect that direction to change.
“That first-place spot isn’t there anymore, but we’re pushing for second, and nothing’s going to stop us from that,” Howarth said.
