This is what the season is all about: it’s the final game. Either win and become conference champion, or lose and spend all year thinking about what could have been.
For the women’s tennis team, this was the scenario three weeks ago against Cerritos. But the story finished without the obligatory happy ending as the Warriors fell on the road, 6-3.
“It’s disappointing that we lost our last match,” Kim Nguyen said. “Even though Cerritos is tough, we had a good enough team to beat them.”
With the loss to Cerritos and a 7-2 victory over Marymount, the match before, the Warriors finished with an 8-3 (6-2) record, good enough for second place in the South Coast Conference.
“Cerritos seemed hungrier than we were and they had more intensity,” coach Steve Van Kanegan said. “It shows that the team that wants it more usually comes out with the win.”
Despite the loss, the Warriors still have the Ojai Tournament that starts today and ends Sunday. The Southern California regional starts next week.
The Ojai Tournament is a collection of universities and junior colleges from all over California, and only individual players from each college attend. This year, EC will send Briana Dalo, La Marano, Tracy Kavanaugh and Nguyen.
For the team as a whole, the Warriors’ next match is the Southern California regional next Friday and Saturday at Fullerton.
The team qualified for the event following a strong performance at the South Coast Conference tournament held over spring break.
“I’m excited that we qualified for the regional because that means we have at least one more match as a team,” Nguyen said.
Should the team win at the regionals, it will travel to Palm Desert for the state championship, May 6-8.
“It will be tough for us to win regional. But for being a team with no superstars, we have won a lot of matches,”Van Kanegan said.
Before the season started, the Warriors were expecting big results, but finished in second place, followed by Marymount in third, and then Long Beach City and Pasadena finishing last. Cerritos was the conference champion.
“We came into the season feeling we had a great shot at winning conference and it’s sad knowing that we couldn’t achieve that goal,” Harue Williams, assistant coach, said.
