The San Marino High boys’ tennis season is in full swing, and the Titans took a break from league play to host powerhouse Arcadia High before continuing their pursuit of another Rio Hondo League title.
The Titans more than held their own against the Apaches in doubles but could not keep up in singles play, leading to a 10-8 defeat March 21 in a nonleague match.
“We have to just play better and smarter,” San Marino coach Melwin Pereira said. “I’m proud of my team. Arcadia has so many players out there, and their subs are coming in and pushing our starters. That tells you they are still pretty deep.”
Arcadia was a formidable opponent, coming into the matchup against San Marino ranked No. 17 in the CIF Southern Section Open/Division I poll.
“I love playing San Marino,” Arcadia coach Richard Chen said. “The whole team and the coaches are great and it’s very close by, so it’s nice. It’s always a great match.”
San Marino won six of nine rounds in doubles. The No. 2 Titans tandem of Gregory Hoang and Bryce Huang won all three of their rounds. They started by taking down the Arcadia No. 2 duo of Roger Wang and Matthew Chen 6-4.
“It was a hard match because it was the first one,” Hoang said. “We were just trying to get into the groove of it.”
Hoang and Huang next defeated the Arcadia No. 1 doubles pairing of Jacky Li and Richard Sui 6-4.
“We were a lot more warmed up for the shots, so we were playing a lot cleaner, a lot nicer,” said Hoang of taking down the Arcadia No. 1 doubles pair. “We just got our rhythm.”
Hoang and Huang’s third rotation came against a pair of Apache substitutes filling in for the regular No. 3 duo. Against the Arcadia fill-ins, Hoang and Huang, with the final result of the team contest already decided, fell behind 5-0 before fighting all the way back to win 7-6 in a tiebreaker to cap the action.
“We were a little bit unmotivated, but when we thought what our coach would say, we definitely stepped up our game because we don’t want to get ridiculed by our coach,” said Huang of their comeback win. “So, ultimately I’d say our success is because of him.”
It was the first time the San Marino doubles No. 1 pairing of Chris Deng and Sebastian Hu had teamed together against competition this season. The duo dropped their opening round to Li and Sui 7-5. However, the pair settled in and won the next two rotations, defeating the Arcadia No. 3 doubles pair 6-4 and then Wang and Chen 6-3.
“We started off pretty slow, but we got it back in the last two matches that we played,” Deng said. “I think we were moving pretty well. The serves were going in pretty consistently, so it was just trying to keep each point as consistent as possible.”
The Titan No. 3 doubles, composed of Rowan Burke and Austin Lan, won their first rotation over the Apache No. 3 team 6-4 before dropping their next two against the visitors’ No. 2 and No. 1 doubles 6-3 and 6-2, respectively.
On the singles side, Titan No. 1 Kayvon Kasravi was responsible for both of his team’s points in singles play. Kasravi started with a 6-4 win over Arcadia’s No. 1 Andy Yu.
“[Yu] was a solid player,” Kasravi said. “I’ve known him from before, but it was a good match. It was a grind. Early on, I went down a little bit, 0-2, wasn’t really moving well, but I was able to recover well and kind of find my rhythm and was able to get back in the match and do the best I could.”
The sophomore then dispatched the Arcadia No. 3 singles player Samarth Srikar 6-2. After that, Kasravi gave way to substitute Steven Wu for the third rotation. Wu dropped that matchup 6-1.
Titan singles No. 2 Jim Wong went down in all three of his rotations, and Titans No. 3 singles Geoffery Foong lost his first rotation to the Apache No. 3 singles player 6-2. Foong gave way to substitute Jalen Lee, who lost his two rounds 6-1 and 6-0.
The Titans will now go back to focusing on Rio Hondo League opposition in the name of securing yet another league title.
“My goal is to win league and now we are in an uphill test,” Pereira said. “Thirteen years of getting all these league titles, now I can feel that it’s a tough time for our team, so I take it as a challenge.”
First published in the March 28 issue of the San Marino Tribune
