Pictured: Sophomore Shirley Yang
Photo by Arnav Damodhar
Sports should be played for a love of the game.
The Mason girls tennis team has tightly embraced this concept through the Coaches Classic Tournament. On Thursday, September 11, and Saturday, September 13, the girls tennis team served their way through the Coaches Classic Tournament, the first individual tournament of the season.
Because the whole team was in the back draw, most lost their matches. However, second singles player and sophomore Isabel Cepeda carried Mason to success. Cepeda won 8-2 against rival Sycamore in her final match.
“I think that the team did pretty well,” Cepeda said. “I am really surprised with myself.”
According to head coach Mike Reid, the conflict with the ACT has really messed up the entire line up.
“We would have liked to done a little bit better,” Reid said. “But, we did okay. We were missing two of our players. (Junior) Sanjana Datla and (senior) Kelly Noriega were both taking the ACT. That hurt us a little bit.”
According to first singles player, sophomore Elizabeth Kong, the Coaches Classic is not a very important tournament — put relatively.
“It doesn’t count for anything,” Kong said. “It just brings the people in our area together so we can play as players and gives friendly competition. But the thing is that because it is unimportant, other schools like to stack. So they would put one of their best players as doubles, whereas Mason, we play our line up straight up.”
The same belief is also shared by Coach Reid. According to him, the results of Coaches Classic doesn’t set any assertion or expectation for the GMC, sectional, or district tournaments.
“It doesn’t matter in terms of the GMCs, the sectionals, or the districts,” Reid said. “It is more of a fun tournament. Some teams put together their singles players and have them play doubles; some teams use it to get ready for the sectionals. But, it’s not the most important tournament. It’s not the same way we view the GMCs or the sectionals.”
According to Reid, this tournament was good in terms of giving doubles players a chance to play other positions. Sophomore Shirley Yang did well, according to him, although Yang lost her final match 8-6 against Sycamore. Overall, the girl’s tennis team is content with their performance.
“We got the opportunity to have some kids play singles who don’t always play singles,” Reid said. “Shirley Yang is playing really well at third singles. Typically, she would be playing second doubles.”