Varsity girls tennis lost to Ayala High School 6-12 at home on Tuesday, Sept. 30 despite the team implementing new strategies in doubles.
Before the game, varsity tennis coach Joseph Fasheh focused on becoming more aggressive and competitive, especially with the doubles teams. To achieve this they changed to the standard position, which is where one player is at the net and the other is at the baseline.
“The girls played hard and they did not give up on many points, but the bad thing was that they made a lot of unforced errors and mistakes at the net,” Fasheh said.
In the first round, the Mustangs were tied at 3-3. Singles one sophomore Brigitte Hsieh started off the game strong and calm. Winning her first match by patiently waiting for her opponent to break down from long exhaustion, which is also known as setting the volley.
“Skill is not the only thing that’s important, but you also need to be really good with your mental capacity because sometimes you may play against difficult players. I feel like, if I am more patient, it could really boost my game, because my mental state would be a lot better,” Hsieh said
In the second round, doubles senior Hayden Wu and senior Chloe Wang tried to be more aggressive and closer to the net. They originally both played at the baseline, but during this match they tried to play at the standard. During the round, the team felt tense and the Mustangs trailed 5-7.
“Everyone was really nervous because we weren’t really at the net, and we were just playing at the baseline. While a lot of the people from the other team were playing at the net,” Wu said.
In the third round, the opponents were very consistent and fierce. It was a tough match for doubles one junior Madilyn Ly and Stephainia Lu. During their game, the opponents had many questionable line calls, requiring them to call over line judges numerous times. The game ended with the score of 6-12.
“I felt pretty good. I felt like I was hitting the best I could, but I think the girls were just better than us, so we couldn’t do much after that,” Ly said.
