Cockiness, confidence or arrogance, call it what you want, but these women are good and they know it.
The women’s tennis team (9-1, 4-1) will have a bye today, but will take on Long Beach City on Tuesday.
The Warriors feel confident about a victory over Long Beach.
“We are a lot stronger then Long Beach City and we are going to win,” Tracy Kavanaugh said. “We will dominate them.”
It will be the second time this year that the team will compete against Long Beach City where the first match was a lopsided victory for the Warriors.
“I’ll expect us to win because we beat them before,” assistant coach Adam Von Arx said. “We have gotten a lot better since that game, too.”
In the past week, the women defeated Mt. SAC twice; one of the matches was a make-up game that was canceled by rain a month ago.
In both matches, the Warriors won 9-0 but while the score makes it look bad, most of the games were close.
“Mt. SAC is a good team, the score does not indicate how good they really are,” Von Arx said.
While Mt. SAC at be a good team, the Warriors always seem to have that extra edge to come out on top.
“The games were tough and most were close, but we pulled through in the end to win our matches,” Kavanaugh said.
The closest game was that of Michelle Morse, who won 6-4,7-5.
Some were easy wins, like that of Kim Espirito, 6-1,6-1; Yen Tran, 6-1, 6-0, and Kavanaugh, 6-2,6-0.
If there is one thing that Von Arx would like to improve about the team, it is that of the doubles teams.
“Good doubles team are always important to have because they can help win close matches,” Von Arx said.
Just because the doubles teams need improvement, it doesn’t mean that they are not good already.
“The (doubles) teams are good though, our third doubles team (Tran and Kavanaugh) is still a strong team,” Von Arx said.
The two other doubles teams are the No. 1 team of Morse and Michele McGary and the No. 2 team of Espirito and Briana Dalo.
“I feel that all three doubles team can do really well in the (Southern California) regional, and all have a chance to make it to state,” Von Arx said.
With the season more then half way done, the team has two goals it believes it is capable of achieving both.
“Our short term goal is to win conference and we will need to defeat Cerritos to do that,” Von Arx said.
The Warriors lost to Cerritos, 7-2 earlier in the year and remain one game behind the Falcons, who are undefeated in conference, but still have one more game against the Warriors.
Even if the Warriors are unable to win conference or at least a share of it, there is still more tennis to be played for the women.
“We have a lot of players who are really good and can do well in regional and make it to state,” Von Arx said.
The Southern California Regional will be next month and will be played at Long Beach City College.
“I wish that some of my teammates had the confidence in themselves that most of us have,” Kavanaugh said.
“We are all good and I feel that all of us are capable of winning and just need my teammates to believe in that,” Kavanaugh said.
“We tend to get nervous before we play, which is normal, but we don’t need don’t need to be that, we are vey good,” Kavanaugh added.
