By ARTHUR HSIEH In the final meeting between the Olympic League’s top 2 teams, both Maranatha and Valley Christian made line-up shifts, the result of which tilted more in Maranatha’s favor, as the Lady Minutemen played their most complete match of the league season. Playing in preparation for the CIF playoffs, MHS players worked on […]
By ARTHUR HSIEH
In the final meeting between the Olympic League’s top 2 teams, both Maranatha and Valley Christian made line-up shifts, the result of which tilted more in Maranatha’s favor, as the Lady Minutemen played their most complete match of the league season. Playing in preparation for the CIF playoffs, MHS players worked on various aspects of their games and looked sharp in doing so.
As the league’s top two players, #1 Angela Hsieh and #2 Malena Smith, continued their dominance, with Hsieh losing only one game and Smith recording her second “triple bagel” of the season, going 6-0, 6-0, 6-0. Starting at singles for the first time in her career, and coming off of a back injury, Rose Zhang, also swept, 6-2, 6-0, 6-3, giving the singles unit a 9-0 sweep. Both Hsieh and Smith are now 21-0 in league and are on track to claim the top 2 seeds in the season-ending league tournament.
It was doubles that was the big anticipation of the day, with the Crusaders combining their top 2 singles players to form a formidable doubles unit, and with Maranatha pairing regular doubles player, Reagan Atallah, with singles player, Aria Haver-Hill, for the second time.
The new #3 tandems played each other right out of the gates in easily the longest and most exciting set of the day. Though the games were close, the Crusaders inched their way to a commanding 5-2 lead before Atallah and Haver-Hill employed a new strategy that helped them close the gap, to 4-5. This is when the game of the match unfolded. Ahead 40-30, MHS had a chance to even the set at 5-5, they squandered an easy put-away floater opportunity, putting the score at deuce. What ensued was a sight to behold, as the teams went back and forth for 19 deuces, with MHS unable to capitalize on 12 ad-in chances. On the flip side, they saved 7 ad-out set points before finally closing out the game to even the set at 5-5.
That one game lasted so long that Hsieh went out to play her second singles set on the next court during that one game and finished her entire set before that one game ended. That game proved to take the wind out of the Crusaders’ sails, as Atallah and Haver-Hill completed the comeback with a 7-5 victory. They continued their momentum in the next set against the #1’s, prevailing, 6-2, before running out of gas in their 3rd set, losing 3-6.
The league’s #1 doubles juggernaut of Maddie Hernandez and Michael Wilkins continued to mow down league opponents, sweeping, 6-2, 6-0, 6-1. They will be the top seed for the league tournament.
MHS’s #2 doubles squad of Hellen Hong and Stella Wang won their first set, 6-4, before dropping their second set, 4-6, to the Crusaders’ new duo. Hong and Wang were unable to complete their third set due to darkness. Under league rules, the host team forfeits the set if it is called due to darkness, a situation nearly all other leagues do not face due to using a deuce plus one or a no-ad scoring system that prevents multiple deuces from taking place.
Maranatha finishes up its season next week with 3 matches in 3 days, before heading into the league tournament the following week.
