Girls’ Tennis: CdM back in semis

STUDIO CITY — Taylor Fogarty and Camellia Edalat have flown under the radar this year, if it’s possible to fly under the radar as a doubles team in an elite CIF Southern Section program.

Fogarty is a senior and Edalat a sophomore for Corona del Mar High. The reason they might be underrated is because they play at No. 2 doubles, and CdM’s No. 1 doubles team of Riley Gerdau and Siena Sharf has deservedly earned much praise.

And yet, on Monday afternoon, none of that mattered. All that mattered was that Fogarty and Edalat were in a big hole against Campbell Hall’s top doubles team and needed to find a way out.

They did so, earning a huge tiebreaker win in the second round. About an hour later, the No. 4-seeded Sea Kings had clinched a thrilling 11-7 victory over the Vikings in a Division 1 quarterfinal playoff match at Weddington Golf & Tennis.

CdM (18-5) reaches the semifinals for the second straight year. The Sea Kings know they will be big underdogs against top-seeded defending champion Palos Verdes Peninsula, which defeated Santa Margarita on Monday in another quarterfinal match.

Last year, CdM lost at Peninsula in the semifinals, but this year’s match will be at CdM on Wednesday. Fogarty and Edalat helped CdM get the chance to host that match, rallying from a 5-2 deficit against Campbell Hall’s Jay Kim and Theresa Papikian to force the tiebreaker. In the tiebreaker, Kim and Papikian went ahead 3-0 before Fogarty and Edalat rallied for the 7-6 (7-4) victory.

“In that tiebreaker, we just had to stay calm and stay positive, not get overwhelmed by the crowd or the other team,” Fogarty said. “They were very strong, but [we wanted to] just play our game, point by point.”

The win gave the Sea Kings a 7-5 sets lead over Campbell Hall (16-2) after two rounds, instead of a 6-6 tie. To Campbell Hall Coach Steve Kuechel, it meant everything.

“That was the match right there,” Kuechel said. “If it’s 6-6 going into the last round, I think we win the match. But you know, they played better in the bigger points. All it was today was, who won the bigger points? Corona del Mar won the bigger points, and Campbell Hall didn’t win. This was a close margin, razor-thin, but they deserve it.”

Fogarty and Edalat, as well as Gerdau and Sharf, completed doubles sweeps in the final round, giving the Sea Kings nine set wins. They only needed one more set to clinch the match. But, in the two sets still going, No. 1 singles player Danielle Willson was trailing Campbell Hall No. 3 Ysabelle Arambulo, while CdM’s No. 3 doubles team of Shelby Anderson and Erica Chen trailed Campbell Hall’s Rene Barton and Cadence Davis.

CdM led the match by just three games, 68-65. If both sets went Campbell Hall’s way, the hosts could have tied the match 9-9 and won on games.

But CdM made sure it wouldn’t come to that. Willson earned a 6-4 win that clinched the match, while Anderson and Chen remarkably won five straight games to claim a 7-5 victory for the 11th set.

“I feel like that’s one of our best qualities, that our girls never give up,” CdM Coach Brian Ricker said. “Even if we’re winning big or losing big to Peninsula, we always get a good effort out of them in the third round. Erica and Shelby easily could have, at 2-5, assumed the other courts were going to win and lost. They didn’t go that route, so I’m really proud of them. To come back and win that set was gigantic.”

Seniors Joy Kim and Ifeoma “Iffy” Kuchler each swept in singles for Campbell Hall. It wasn’t enough to top the Sea Kings, who are in the CIF semifinals for the ninth time in Ricker’s 11-year tenure. With Monday’s win, they also qualify for next week’s CIF Southern California Regional Championships for the second straight season.

It’s a big accomplishment for a team that in recent years has been short on players with high United States Tennis Assn. junior rankings.

“We don’t have a lot of tournament girls, but we have a lot of very good athletes,” Ricker said. “If they’re not fast, they’re strong. It’s a very athletic group, and they’re very receptive to what we do in practice. It turns into victories on the court.”

Anderson and Chen won twice against Campbell Hall for CdM, which won eight of nine doubles sets. Such a feat will be considerably tougher against Peninsula, which is considered a big favorite to repeat as CIF champion. The Panthers defeated the Sea Kings, 15-3, in a nonleague match Sept. 23.

“We’re going to go out there trying our hardest to get a victory,” Ricker said. “As long as we fight our hardest in every set, maybe we can pull an upset. You never know until we play the game, right? There’s been bigger upsets in the history of sports.”

The Sea Kings were not upset after beating Campbell Hall. Sharf and Willson stayed behind at a power outlet near the tennis courts after the win, charging their phones for the long bus ride back to Orange County.

It was easy for CdM to feel charged up about the big victory on the road.

“We’re really excited to be back in the semis,” Fogarty said. “We’ve had a great season, but we’ve lost a lot of close ones. I think that this is just getting us back in our groove, putting us right back where we belong.”