Broncs no match for Spartans
Strathmore picks up third win of the week
Three matches in one week is a lot for any team but one thing that sweetened a long week for Strathmore High School’s girls tennis team was that all three matches this week ended in a win for the Spartans.
Sitting at No. 2 in the East Sequoia League, Strathmore (64, 3-1 ESL) swept Granite Hills 9-0 on Tuesday then beat Sierra Pacific 6-3 Wednesday before taking down Kern Valley 8-1 Thursday at home in a non-esl match.
“Three home games so that kind of helped,” SHS head coach Ryan Mccusker said. “But it was a long week since we had a little bit different [schedule]. Normally we play Tuesday, Thursdays [but] then this week we played Monday, Wednesday our league games, and then had Kern Valley here for a kind of exhibition match.”
An interesting stat from the Spartans’ wins this week is that all three doubles teams went 3-0 and kept Strathmore perfect in doubles for the week. Against the Broncs, Neha Reddy and Hennasey Mendoza won the No. 1 match 8-3 while Lauren Levya and Elizabeth Fischer won the No. 3 match 8-2.
In the No. 2 match, Taylor Simonich and Abby Miller trailed by a game for nearly the entire match before taking a 7-6 lead. The two then won the match in a tie-breaker set they won 7-4. It was the second time this week the two had their match go to a tiebreaker.
“They stayed tough and were able to pull through in the end,” Mccusker said about Simonich and Miller.
Strathmore dominated their singles matches with both No. 2 Mendoza and and No. 5 Miller winning 8-3 and No. 3 Simonich refusing to give up a game and winning 8-0. No. 6 Daniela Dela Cruz won seven games straight before winning her match 8-2. The Spartans only loss was in the No. 1 match that Reddy lost 8-3.
On how the team’s played so far, Mccusker said, “Good. Real steady. All the girls kind of play their game. We don’t really have a real standout, we’re all pretty even down the line. But everybody sticks to their game, they don’t try to overplay and they seem not to get too nervous.
They stay pretty confident and just continue to play their game and play the ball versus playing the opponent.”
So far this season, No. 1 Corcoran has been the team's toughest match in league. The Spartans lost 8-1 to the Panthers on Sept. 4 but Mccusker said things could go differently when the two meet at Strathmore for a match on Thursday, Sept. 20. On the earlier match, Mccusker added that the team was down a couple of players due to a scheduling snafu.
“Corcoran's really tough, we had a hard time with them at their courts so hopefully we'll do better against them at home,” Mccusker said. He added, “Half the team missed the bus so we had to forfeit third doubles. They probably still would've beat us at their place because their courts are a lot slicker than ours so the ball tends to skid. Rather than bounce up it just kinds of slides. So it took awhile for our girls to get used to it and kind of by the time they got used to their courts it was already over.”
Strathmore's next match is at home on Tuesday, Sept. 18 against rival Lindsay.