The
Cerritos College women's tennis team had
to wait over three and a half hours to
finally beat El Camino College, 4-3, on
Wednesday afternoon and celebrate as
South Coast Conference championship.
Entering the match, both teams had two
conference losses, and with the match
tied, 3-3, it all came down to the #6
singles match. The conference title was
the third in four years for the Falcons.
Sophomore
Asha Badal (Mayfair HS)
and El Camino's Lucy Rivera split the
first two sets, with each winning, 6-4.
In the third set, Badal had a chance to
go up 4-1, but saw her serve broken,
with Rivera winning three straight games
to go up, 4-3. But Badal fought back and
the match was then tied at 5-5. After
Badal broke Rivera's serve, she had
triple championship point in the next
game, but lost the next three points to
be at deuce. By the time she won the
match, Badal had seven championship
points before finally finishing off
Rivera, 7-5.
In another critical
match, sophomore
Jelaine DeGuzman (Downey
HS) beat LaTeefa Brown in the #3
singles match, 6-3, 7-6 (7-3), while
sophomore
Mary Jane Bernardo (Kennedy
HS) came away with a 7-6 (7-2), 6-3
win in the #4 singles match.
After the Falcons
lost the doubles point, they knew they
had to win four of the six singles
matches in order to capture the
conference title. They also picked up a
singles win from freshman
Sonia Gutierrez (Norwalk
HS) in the #2 match, 6-0, 6-2, to
go along with the other three singles
wins. The only doubles team to win was
the duo of Gutierrez and Badal, who
picked up an 8-3 win in the #2 doubles
match.
The Falcons will now host Santa Monica College in a
non-conference match at 2:00 p.m. on
Thursday.
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