Girls tennis secures a spot in CCS quarter-finals

Eric Wong

Varsity girls tennis sweeps Mountain View to advance to the Nov. 12 quarterfinals

Ranked as the number two seed, the varsity girls tennis team automatically qualified for the second round of CCS, held Nov. 10. On the other side of the court, Mountain View came fresh off a victory over Carmel High School to reach the second round of CCS for the first time in 13 years. Heavily favored to win, the Lady Matadors swept all four singles matches and all three doubles matches to move on to the quarterfinals this Friday, Nov. 12. Number one singles: Senior Sylvia Li defeats sophomore Vivian Li of Mountain View (6-0, 6-2)Senior Sylvia Li, committed to play for Harvard, dispatched her opponent, sophomore Vivian Li from Mountain View High School, in two short sets. From the beginning, Sylvia was in control, holding her serve and breaking Vivian twice to take a commanding 5-0 lead. Sylvia finished out the set with a series of blistering serves and smartly placed shots to close out the first set 6-0. Sylvia had a shaky start to the second set with a number of unforced errors to allow Vivian to break her serve and then win her own serve to put her in a 0-2 hole. Slowly, she began to find her rhythm again,aided by a large number of unforced errors by Vivian. When Vivian came to the net, Sylvia failed to lift the ball over her but her mistake went unpunished as Vivian’s volley soared past the back line. Sylvia soon regained the upper hand to win the next six sets and secure victory.“I haven’t been practicing well recently and I wanted to use today to work on my level of focus,” Sylvia said. “Also, there were some new shots that I worked on.”On the other side of the court, Vivian used the match as a learning experience and a benchmark for her progress. “I wanted to make sure to not let Sylvia attack my second serve,” Vivian said. “I tried to move her around the court, and I’m pretty satisfied with how I played today.” Number two singles: Senior Vynnie Kong defeats Iva Celan of Mountain View (6-4, 6-2)

Senior Vynnie Kong delivers a powerful serve in her singles match against Iva Celan of Mountain View. She won two closely contested sets to secure the victory. Photo by Erin Chiu.

Although Kong was off to a slow start, she soon found her rhythm and won both of her sets with ease.Due to her lack of focus in the beginning, she allowed her opponent, Iva Celan, to take the first two games of the set.“I wasn’t moving in the beginning, and my opponent kept scoring winners on me. I wasn’t reading the ball well, but later on, I stepped up my focus more and stopped randomly hitting the ball,” Kong said.After Kong re-adjusted her focus, she started placing the ball wisely in the court to take the next three games and the lead. Both players held their serve until Kong finally won the set 6-4.Bringing her momentum and new found focus from the first set, Kong scored net-skimming aces and powerful corner shots to win the second set of her match 6-2.In the first game of the set, Celan managed to save a deep shot from Kong, just barely sending it over the net. But Kong capitalized on the high lob and scored a winner by slamming it from short court into the far right corner—with no possible return by Celan. Kong continued to deliver an outstanding performance, putting herself up 3-0.Although frustrated, Celan managed to convert her anger into power, winning the next two games. However, Kong soon caught on to Celan’s pattern of hitting in the far left corner of the court and counter-attacked. By doing so, Kong put herself up 5-2 and headed in the last game in a favorable position.At a deuce in the determining match, Celan put up a strong fight for Kong. A long rally of net-skimming shots occurred until Celan returned Kong’s shot out, giving Kong the match 2-0. Number three doubles: Junior Nitisha Mehta and senior Jackie Lim win their match 2-0 (6-0, 6-1)The doubles pair swiped the first game 6-0 with their technical shots and teamwork. Junior Nitisha Mehta and senior Jackie Lim played an excellent first set, winning games 40-15 and 40-love.Although they had to play deuces for their last two games, they managed to defeat them with wisely placed shots. In an attempt to prolong the match, their opponents hit the ball short, but Lim scored a winner. “Jackie had some great volleys and I was able to get all the shots that maybe went over her head. We just played well as a team, and we were really coordinated,” Mehta said.The second set flew by just as smoothly as the pair continued to volley well and deliver aces. The other two doubles teams performed just as exceptionally. Freshman Kelsey Chong and sophomore Ruri Kobayakawa won their match 2-0 (6-1, 6-0) as well as junior Claire Chin and freshman Sabrina Mui, who won a shut-out 2-0 (6-0, 6-0).{cc-by-nc-sa}