It was 3:30 in the afternoon and the sun was roasting hot. The scene may look casual to an outsider, but the relaxed hang out on the tennis courts concealed something intense — the players’ strong determination to dominate CCS this year.
The team had a rough time in CCS last year. The tournament conflicted with AP testing, so several players were unable to play. They finished the season second behind Saratoga High School and losing quarterfinals to Bellarmine High School, MVHS’ strongest competitors.
As a team captain, senior Jonathan Li has to fulfill additional commitments to the team, even though he does most of his practice outside of school.
“This year is definitely different for me as a captain,” Li said. “Before my only responsibility was to show up for matches, but now it is much more of a team effort.”
Li also has high hopes for the team due to the increased number of potential freshman players. The unique aspect of this year’s team is an abnormally high proportion of freshman players, more than seven freshman in the first bracket. Co-captain senior Alvin Cheong is excited about the prospects of having room to improve.
“We have a lot of freshman on the team,” Cheong said. “It gives us a lot of space to grow.”
Although the immediate performance of the team may not be affected greatly, Cheong and Li are optimistic that the future of the team is in good hands.
Freshman Rohan Jain agrees that freshman will definitely make for strong team a in the future, but that they aren’t there yet.
“It’s just practice,” Jain said. “There’s a lot of conditioning to be done to improve our wrist strength, and just our abilities overall.”
When it comes to strengths and weaknesses, the team definitely has outstanding singles players, but lacks coordination in their doubles according to coach Bruce Becker.
“I will be working on our doubles,” Becker said. “We need to work on being more aggressive.”
The team has set high goals and hope to make up this year for what they weren’t able to achieve in 2014.
“Our goal is, of course, to do well in CCS and hopefully get to the finals,” Cheong said. “The most important thing [though] is to train hard.”
The team is off to a good start, winning against Saratoga High School 4-3, and is looking forward to a solid season as well as promising players for future years.
Boys tennis’ next home game in on 4/7 against Redwood at 3:30.
