SPORTS IVL tennis finals stick mostly to script
EL CENTRO — The Imperial Valley League girls tennis finals are fully in the books, and the results were written almost entirely in chalk.
Wednesday was the second of two days designed to suss out the best of the IVL’s best, as determined by head-to-head play at the Southwest High tennis courts.
The day began with six matches on the docket — the field having been winnowed down to the top four singles players and doubles pairs on Monday, the members of the All-League team in other words — with each match (originally) to be played in the classic best-of-three-sets format.
The singles semi-finals pitted top-seeded Lucia Uribe of Vincent against Southwest’s Andra Dickerson and second-seeded Marisa Uribe against No. 3 Gwen Rodriguez, of Calexico.
The doubles matchups featured the Scots’ Camila and Viviana Lopez Portillo going against Brawley’s Annalis Ochoa and Mari Zamora, and Kayla Lee and Sarah Huang (another couple of Wildcats) playing Calexico’s Aleyda Arana and Angie Perry.
As noted, seeding was generally a reliable indicator of how these matches would play out.
Lucia Uribe had little difficulty with Dickerson, setting her down easy, 6-1, 6-1.
Marisa had more work on her hands versus Rodriguez, but managed fine, taking the first set 6-4 and holding a 5-1 advantage in the second before Rodriguez was unfortunately forced to withdraw after rolling a previously injured ankle, guaranteeing an all-Uribe singles final.
The top-ranked Lopez Portillo twins worked their way past Ochoa and Zamora with their typically stolid brand of tennis, 6-3, 6-1, and the second-seeded duo of Lee and Huang downed Arana and Perry 6-3, 6-0 to set up another one vs. two championship round.
The doubles final would be the one place where the outcome was not preordained by the little numbers next to the players’ names.
Despite being seeded below the Vincent girls, Lee and Huang would need little match time to maneuver themselves into the driver’s seat, using their communication and active positioning to out-angle their foes on a number of occasions, ultimately winning 6-1, 6-3.
The victory gave Lee her third consecutive IVL doubles title — each with a different partner. A versatile player, Lee frequently shifts between singles and doubles, but has hit her highest notes in pairs play.
The singles final contained the plum (if not altogether surprising) narrative of family ties.
In many ways the Uribe sisters are the Valley’s toscale analog to Venus and Serena Williams.
Obviously there’s a bit of a talent gap, but there’s no denying that they’re at the top of the local game, like the Williams sisters have, at various points, been on top of the global one.
Lucia is a bit older than Marisa — she’s a senior, while Marisa is only a sophomore — and currently the better player of the two. Her strokes are a bit more consistent and she is a couple of steps ahead of her sister in terms of point construction, but Marisa’s got the straight goods. Some of her strokes — particularly her backhand, which she can place with pace — give evidence that she may prove to be the superior player in time.
Ahead of their match, it was decided by the Vincent coaching staff that, rather than play a full, best-of-three round, the sisters would play only one, winner-take-all set, as a way of minimizing injury risk ahead of next week’s CIF-SDS individual playoffs.
Despite its truncated form, the final still proved to be excellent sport.
Both girls clearly relished this opportunity for life-long dinner table bragging rights, and went all out. At times the air fairly crackled with the aftershocks of their exertions.
Lucia started on the serve and took game one without too much difficulty, but in the second game with Marisa serving, the competition started to ratchet up and Marisa was able to hold serve after fighting off several ad-outs, a result which seemed temporarily to disconcert her older sibling.
Marisa took advantage off Lucia’s off game, breaking her thanks in part to a couple of ill-timed double faults — giving her a real shot at the day’s top honors — but Lucia wasn’t long in returning the favor, coming back strong in game four to tie things up 2-2.
The sisters each held over the next two games — bringing the tie to three-all, and growing increasingly vocal in the process as self-admonitions and classic tennis grunts became commonplace — before Lucia took command and won the final three games to secure her top-dog status using her ability to consistently blast the corners to wrongfoot Marisa whenever she attempted to recover to the middle.
Afterwards Lucia was emotionally wrung out, but extremely grateful for the win, acknowledging that Marisa is “her biggest competition.”
Her sister wasn’t her only obstacle — she had to play with a backup racquet lighter than her usual battle axe after breaking a string — but the sibling rivalry certainly made the match more nerve-wracking.
“I saw [Marisa] out there nervous, and I got nervous (too),” she said.
Still, the win “feels great” and she’s looking forward to competing again next week in San Diego.