Last Tuesday, the boys’ tennis team overpowered the Half Moon Bay Cougars on the Bears’ senior night. M-A won four out of the seven matches, making their farewell to the seniors bitter sweet.
Freshmen Alexander Derrough and Ismail Safdari, the three doubles team, were first off court with a comfortable 6-0, 6-0 win. Derrough said, “I think we played really well, the competition wasn’t too difficult, and it was mostly a one-sided game.”
Following this quick win was another one from the one doubles team. Senior Rylan Stern and junior Thomas Garff have played with one another the entire season and make a reliable team. They won 6-1, 6-1. Stern reflected, “Honestly, I did not play my best today. But, we were able to dominate the match, and individually Thomas and I have been doing well together.”
The next match off was a 6-1, 6-0 loss for senior Alex Parikh-Briggs. Coach Tom Soronson explained, “Alex played one of the best matches of the season, but he played probably the best player in CCS. The scores did not indicate the quality of Alex’s performance.”
Trailing this loss was another from the second doubles team in a close match, with junior Daniel Lavaka and senior Riley Wu losing 7-5, 6-2.
With the overall match score tied at 2-2, M-A was able to clinch another win. Sophomore Frode Solem rolled off the singles three court, hitting an unreturnable drop shot on match point. He said, “I wasn’t fully focused on my match today, but am ready to go to the playoffs. I want to win the PAL Championship and then move on to CCS.”
Shortly after this win came another loss, this time for the singles two sophomore Aditya Kudaravalli. He lost 7-5, 6-1, bringing the overall match score to 3-3.
With one match left to go from singles four, the boys relied on senior Kiran Duriseti. He had split sets with his opponent, so the pressure was high for this ten-point tie-breaker. Duriseti was able to seal the match, winning 5-7, 6-1, 10-4. Soronson said, “Kiran was the key to success today, winning the super tiebreaker in his tenacious tennis playing. He has lost a couple of them in the past, but this time he came through. He refused to lose.”
The boys’ tennis team will look to build on their successful season next year as they had eight underclassmen playing on the varsity team this year.
