Getting a victory in regular season competition for women’s tennis was just too far out of reach for the Warriors.
Closing out the season, the Warriors lost a third time to Mt. San Antonio 8-1 and to Cerritos 7-2. The losses were the teams’ eighth and ninth losses in a row, respectively.
The team plays Orange Coast next Tuesday April 6 at 2p.m. in their first postseason match.
Several players turned in strong efforts in the loss against Mt. SAC, including Cressan Delima, freshman, who got the lone point for the team.
“The first set, she started hitting inconsistently, and then I used some strategies, like using the wind to my advantage, and that helped me get more points,” Delima said of her match.
Delima then lost the second set, which sent her and her opponent to a 10 point tiebreaker round, which Delima won 10-7.
“Pretty much, she still made the same mistakes,” Delima said, “so I just took advantage.
Coach Steve Van Kanegan, who praised Delima for her hard work, said that she has “improved several aspects of her game” and that he was happy with her performance.
Carolina Mendoza, freshman, put up a good performance against Mt. SAC’s number one player, despite the results not falling in her favor.
“The first set, we had a lot of deuces, a lot of rallies that lasted a really long time” Mendoza said.
Van Kanegan said that due to injuries and having to match different players with each other, doubles competition has struggled all season long.
“I think it’s more fun to play doubles,” Ashley Bell, freshman, who plays on the number two doubles team, said. “It’s serious but at the same time you have someone there, there is that element of teamwork.”
It was a long regular season and now that the Warriors as a team are out of contention for the postseason, each individual player has a shot at winning in the conference finals, where every player in the four team conference is randomly paired up with another as they face off in both singles and doubles competition.
With the random nature of postseason competition, anything can happen, and the number one doubles team of Eunice Na and Carolina Mendoza has a “serious” chance at winning their conference matches, Van Kanegan said.
With the Warriors as a whole done for the season after next Tuesday’s match, the team could look forward to next season, as Bell, Mendoza, and Delima all said they were interested in joining the team again next season.
The team gets along really well and this season has helped the team bond together, Bell said.
Van Kanegan said that he is not going to hold any expectations about next season since anything can happen regarding players and who joins the team for another season, although he did have nice words for the team.
“Yeah, they’re pretty excited. It’s a great group.”
