With the continued absences of the Chen and Hoeberechts brothers due to illness, we were fortunate that our opponent today was Las Lomas. The Knights are considered interleague play now, and they are continuing to rebuild as a team. That being the case, we won the match convincingly even with a short-handed roster. It’s always a good thing to get our lower ranked varsity players into lines that count towards the final score – I can’t recreate that scenario in practices. The win today brings the Dons to an overall win-loss record of 9-6. Five of those loses were situations where we were missing multiple top six players, so I don’t let that cloud the goal of finishing the season strong and making it into the division 2 playoffs.
Today’s match was clinched by the first five singles lines putting Acalanes up 5-0. #4 Shah was first off quickly dispatching Shih 6-1, 6-2. #5 Shin was second off winning in straight sets. #2 Eagens finished next. Peyton played a good match with many long rallies. He won all of the critical points and gave up no games. #1 Owens was fourth off. He had a fast start running off with the first set 6-1, then things got a little complicated. Kirsch settled into the match and upped his game landing shots while reducing unforced errors. Some frustration set in with Nick and the second set went to Diego 4-6. Nick regrouped in the deciding tiebreaker, winning 10-3. #3 Foster finished about the same time with a 6-3, 6-3 victory over Chan. Though all of the top five played up, they played well taking the pressure off of the doubles.
The Dons exposed the Knight’s lack of depth as the three doubles teams won easily. #1 Rocca/Marshall pounced 6-1, 6-1 and got back to their winning ways. #2 Goldwyn/Ristow gave up only three games as well as #3 Gorham/O’Brien. Our only loss on the afternoon was #6 Zheng vs. Boyle. Andrew is #15 on the team’s roster but was playing up at #6. His match went the longest and finished last. Though Andrew lost the first set 6-2, he fought hard to tie the match up by winning the second set 6-4. The tiebreaker was a lot of back and forth but Taro pulled away to close it at 10-7. Acalanes 8, Las Lomas 1.
Next week there are two home matches scheduled. Tuesday, we host Clayton Valley (our last of four interleague matches) and Thursday we host Campolindo. Our drivers get a break – and I thank them again and again as we had a lot of away matches this year. Thanks for the support today. It was a little less stressful and we were able to enjoy the beautiful weather. Go Dons! Coach Rick
Results – Acalanes defeated Las Lomas 8-1
Singles
#1 Nick Owens (A) defeated Diego Kirsch (LL) 6-1, 4-6, 10-3
#2 Peyton Eagens (A) defeated Chris Casamiquela (LL) 6-0, 6-0
#3 Sammy Foster (A) defeated Trevor Chan (LL) 6-3, 6-3
#4 Saaj Shah (A) defeated Kyson Shih (LL) 6-1, 6-2
#5 Kyle Shin (A) defeated Enzo Lee (LL) 6-2, 7-5
Taro Boyle (LL) defeated #6 Andrew Zheng (A) 6-2, 4-6, 10-7
Doubles
#1 Dylan Rocca/Blake Marshall (A) defeated Pyush Vyas/Rumtin Khorram (LL) 6-1, 6-1
#2 Danny Goldwyn/Carsten Ristow (A) defeated Jon Schatz/Ian Nguyen (LL) 6-3, 6-0
#3 Chris Gorham/Billy O’Brien (A) defeated John Plurkowski/Emiliyan Shivachev (LL) 6-3, 6-0
