Sometimes you have to step back and just say, “This is ridiculous.”  The Moore League sent three girls’ tennis teams to the CIF playoffs this year: Lakewood, Wilson, and Poly.  With Wilson’s elimination at the hands of the La Reina Regents yesterday afternoon coming on the score-by-games tiebreaker, that means all three of those teams got booted via that method.

To catch you up: tennis team matches play three rounds, with six matches per round.  Afterward, the team who has won the most matches out of those 18 takes the win—unless it’s tied at nine, in which case the team with more set victories advances.  Unfortunately for fans of local tennis, all three of our LB teams got knocked out via the tiebreaker method.

The Regents were topping the Bruins 7-5 after two rounds, but the Bruins lunged back into it, winning four of the final six matches in order to force the tiebreak—which they lost, 83-80.  Again, that makes them the third Moore League team (out of three) to end their season on a tiebreak.

Now, I went ahead and did a little research here to show you how ludicrous this is.  So far in Division III CIF postseason play, there have been 38 total matches played, including the wildcard.  Of those 38, six matches have gone to the tiebreak—half of those have been Moore League teams.  How weird is that?

After Poly’s defeat at the rackets of South Pasadena in the wild card round, I asked ‘Rabbits coach Ricardo Montecinos about the rarity of the tiebreak coming into play.  “It’s not uncommon,” he said.  “Actually I’d say it happens with some regularity.”  It does if you’re from the Moore Leauge, at least.