The women’s doubles team made up of freshman Stephanie Kingham and sophomore Natsuki Hoshiko exchanged points back-to-back but faltered as the visiting Cerritos Falcons won two consecutive games.

The El Camino women’s tennis dropped a 9-0 conference loss to visiting Cerritos College on Tuesday.

Cerritos had the advantage from the get go, as EC forfeited three points for being short-handed.

EC has been short-handed in past games, but the team was especially small this game since No. 1 player Violet Simpson was sick, assistant coach Darin Dunn said.

Freshman Stephanie Kingham and sophomore Natsuki Hoshiko lost, 8-2, in doubles against Petra Such and Diviana Bravo from Cerritos.

Kingham commended the team’s ability to, “(keep) our heads up and (have) a new mindset for each point.”

She said they need to work on, “not getting into a pushing battle,” as was evident with her later singles match with Bravo.

In doubles action, freshman Sofia Manouchehry and Sandy Mejia lost, 0-8, to sophomore Elizabeth Aceves and sophomore Danielle Pastor from Cerritos.

In singles action, Kingham lost to Diviana Bravo, 6-3, 6-4.

“In the singles, it was just kind of going back and forth, (their) No. 1 and (our) No. 2,” Dunn said.

Kingham was up 4-3 in the middle of the game, but Bravo was able to make pace and take the 5-4 advantage going into the sixth game.

Sophomore Natsuki Hoshiko’s darted across the court to combat Cerritos team member Danielle Pastor’s game, but lost 6-4, 6-0.

Manouchehry lost to Elizabeth Aceves, 6-0, 6-0.

Despite the loss, she was happy with the improvements she made throughout the day.

“I just improved today in my hitting skills and my accuracy,” Manouchehry said. “I was just hitting my shots really hard at a certain angle, you have those days.”

Freshman Sandy Mejia lost to Mary Navalta, 6-0, 6-0.

The team saw the game as a learning experience.

“We know that Cerritos is a pretty tough team, so we did the best we could,” Kingham said. “We just have to learn from our losses and go from there.”

Assistant coach Dunn is looking towards the future for the women’s tennis team.

“I think their serves for the most part were good today. I don’t think we had too many double faults,” Dunn said. “Our shot selection was pretty good. If we keep working, I think we’ll be okay with our tournaments that we have coming up.”