On Friday, Nov. 8, the Aliso Girls Tennis team ended their season with a defeat against the Santa Margarita Eagles. During league, the girls went 7-1, marking the fifth consecutive year of them earning league championships.
This year was the first year that any team in Aliso’s history made it into the open division. The open division is the most competitive postseason tournament that CIF has to offer because each team is hand-picked. This year Aliso Girls Tennis was ranked sixth, the best they have ever ranked in the final CIF-SS to earn this spot in the division.
Before the match on Friday, the Wolverines swept at the South Coast League Finals in doubles.
When asked about the strategy of playing solely doubles, Coach Jeff Pinter said, “I decided to put my strongest singles players [Olivia and Camille Allegre] together. Then I put our normal best doubles team [Jessica Chiu and Shen Trudy] as the second team to compete.”
This strategy did work in favor of the Wolverines since the Allegre sisters came in first place and Chiu and Trudy came in second, marking an even more successful league for the girls.
Unfortunately, the game against the Eagles did not have the same turnout as the South Coast doubles match. Before this match, the Wolverines faced the Eagles in preseason and lost the match 6-12, marking their only preseason loss. The girls were hoping they could turn it around but they fell a bit short.
In Round One singles, Aliso won 2-1. Ai Kato (10) was able to give Aliso the win in her match with the score being 6-3, while Olivia Allegre (12) gave Aliso another win in singles with the score of 7-5. In Round one doubles, Aliso got swept 0-3. In Round Two singles, both Camille and Olivia Allegre won their matches with an impressive 6-0 win. In Round Two doubles, the outcome was the same as the first round but the doubles team Hannah Zidbeck and Whitney Luu put up a close fight with the score being 4-6. In the third and final round, O. Allegre crushed her final round three opponents with a score of 6-0. C. Allegre also won her match with a score of 6-4. Kato also put up a good fight against her final opponent with the score being 5-7. The strength of Santa Margarita’s girls’ double teams was sadly too much for the Aliso girls’ double team since they got swept by the Eagle’s double teams again. Making the final score of the match 6-10.
When asked about her feelings after the game, doubles player Miah Zhou says, “I’m super sad that the season is over but Santa Margarita is a really strong team we knew would be tough, so I’m proud of the fight we did put up against them.”
After the game, Coach Pinter told his girls, “I’m super proud of you and you should feel very proud of yourself. Even though we lost today, we had a historic season this year.”
Luckily, girls tennis is not yet finished. Both doubles teams from the South Coast League Finals get a chance to compete with over 100 other players in both the single and doubles categories to see how they rank in the CIF-SS singles and doubles division.
