Poly’s wild card matchup against South Pasadena, for the right to compete in the CIF girls’ tennis postseason bracket, couldn’t have been much tighter. The way team tennis is decided is through three rounds—in each round, six matches are played, three doubles and three singles. At the end of the third round, whoever has won the most matches is declared the winner. Except that on Tuesday, both teams won 9 matches, and so it went to the automatic tiebreaker—the team who won the most sets was declared the winner. Unfortunately for the Jackrabbits, that was South Pasadena, who had won 82 to Poly’s 67.
After round one, the Jackrabbits held a commanding lead, up 5 matches to 1, but Poly coach Ricardo Montecinos knew it wasn’t over. “They’re a tough team,” he told his players. “We have to keep after them.”
In the second round, though, it was South Pas who got the best of Poly, flipping the table and taking 5 matches to Poly’s 1, evening the match score at 6-6 going into round 3. Five of the matches finished relatively quickly, with Poly winning three and South Pas winning two—that meant that as the ‘Rabbit duo of Miquela Newhart and Alexis Nakamura battled the South Pas doubles team, everything hung on the balance. Knowing that South Pas had the advantage in the tiebreak, the girls’ teammates and families urged them on, but ultimately fell in a nailbiter.
“I liked the added pressure,” Newhart (who’s a freshman) said afterward. “But we just didn’t stay focused.”
“I’m a little disappointed in how we finished the season,” said Montecinos. “But they’re a really scrappy team, and they made us play.” A few Jackrabbits will go on to compete in the CIF individual tournament, but this concludes the year for the team.
Wilson
Wilson didn’t play today since they didn’t need to qualify as a Wild Card, so they just got to sit back and see who they’d host on Thursday—that will be Upland, who will be on the Bruins’ courts at 2pm.
Lakewood
Lakewood, the Moore League champs, were in the same situation—after Tuesday’s matches, the Lancers learned that they’ll be hosting Downey this Thursday, also at 2pm.