Girls’ Tennis: Eagles fall in wild-card match

CHINO HILLS — Estancia High senior Morgan Miller has never broken a string while playing high school tennis.

So, before the last match of Miller’s career, Coach Rachel de los Santos came up to her senior No. 1 doubles player.

“Your last match,” de los Santos teased. “You’re going to break a string!”

Miller never did. She almost got a win in the last set, too, before falling with partner Lauren Weisser in a tiebreaker.

“I’ve never broken a string in tennis,” Miller said. “I don’t know how that works. It just does.

“That’s my goal one day, to break a string,” she added with a laugh. “That’s kind of a sad goal. That’s OK. I like it.”

The Eagles as a team were unable to break a streak on Tuesday. They fell at Ayala, 13-5, in a CIF Southern Section Division 2 wild-card playoff match.

It’s the third straight year that Estancia, the third-place team from the Orange Coast League, has lost in a Division 2 wild-card match. But that’s OK with de los Santos. At least her team has made the playoffs three straight years. And she knew that even if the Eagles would have won Tuesday, they honestly didn’t stand much of a chance playing at undefeated Tri-Valley League champion La Reina of Thousand Oaks in the first round Wednesday.

“To be honest with you, I would rather end our season against a nice team that we can compete fairly well with,” de los Santos said. “[Ayala] beat us, but we got some wins in there and had some close sets. I’d rather go out like this, than go out to Thousand Oaks and getting beat by a first-place team 18-0.”

Estancia (9-10) did compete against Ayala (10-6), the third-place team from the Palomares League. Eagles junior Kinley Ohland swept at No. 1 singles. And sophomore Karina Catalano, a late-season junior varsity call-up, won twice at No. 2 singles.

Ohland was coming off an impressive third-place showing at the Orange Coast League tournament. She beat two Calvary Chapel players — Lauren Saito in the league quarterfinals and Rachel Digiambattista in the third-place match — to whom Ohland had lost during league.

But the hosts were too strong in doubles. The teams of Whitnie Szutu and Nicole Ro, Kaila Phaychanpheng and Yuri Kil, as well as Genelle Paderanga and Nina Navasa, all swept.

Still, the Eagles enjoyed their season. They will miss their four graduating senior starters, including Miller, the No. 2 doubles team of Mikaela Soriano and Andrea Ponce, as well as Mai Le.

Miller said beating rival Costa Mesa twice in league this year by wide margins (15-3 and 16-2) was definitely a highlight.

“It’s cool to be able to get the opportunity to go to CIF,” Miller said. “This is the first year that we’ve gone away [on the road] for CIF. It kind of felt a little more intense this year, just because it wasn’t on our own courts. It was fun, it was a challenge. I enjoyed playing them, because I haven’t met them before … It was fun to play people that I didn’t know.”

The Eagles had to do some adjusting before the season, when No. 2 singles player Slade Garnett tore her ACL. De los Santos was forced to break up last year’s No. 1 doubles team of Miller and Eden Steel, putting Steel in singles.

De los Santos said she never really had a stable No. 3 doubles team all year. Still, she agreed with her players that the Eagles had a fun year.

“A lot of them are in drama together, they’re all in AP classes together,” she said. “It really was a tight-knit group of close friends on the team.”