MV Women’s tennis team is serving up dubs

Joshua Balagot and Tyler Choi|December 12, 2022

Monte Vista’s Women’s Varsity Tennis team is taking a group photo after their first win of the 2022-2023 season against Carondelet. They played over eighteen games in the entire regular season and came out undefeated.

Monte Vista High School’s women’s varsity tennis team finished the 2022-23 season strong following a 21-1 overall record and placing within the top four in North Coast Section (NCS).

The team ended the regular season with an 18-0 record in the East Bay Athletic League (EBAL). Being undefeated, they placed first in their league and entered NCS as the __ seed.

They won their first round of NCS but the season came to an end after a loss to Amador Valley High School in the team’s second round of NCS. While they may not have advanced in NCS, the players are still proud of their progress this season.

“We did better than we expected this year,” Monte Vista sophomore and tennis player Stephanie Cao said. “We lost a lot of good players [last year] so our expectations weren’t very high.”

Within each match, many games are played as a selected few players must play a game against a player on the opposing team. Some of the games are singles and the others are doubles, where a player plays alone or with a teammate respectively. This year, the team had an especially strong line-up due to each player being individually skilled. This is why it is imperative that every member of the team must be dependable and ready to play where the team needs them.

“None of our main line-up singles players graduated last year so a lot of our strong singles players were moved to play doubles,” senior and varsity women’s tennis player Dani Michiels said. “Our doubles teams, all three of them, were really strong this year and our singles lineup has always been strong.”

Last year, the women’s tennis team also made it to NCS, but were entered as a wild card because they placed second in their league.

The team expects to do even better next season with many experienced JV players joining the varsity team.

“There are only two seniors in the main line-up and there are some strong JV players who will get pulled up next year,” Michiels said. “Some of whom have already played with the varsity team at key moments during the season.”