In their first rivalry matchup and first home game of the season, the Los Altos High School varsity girls tennis team narrowly defeated the Mountain View High School Spartans 4–3 on Tuesday, September 17.
The Eagles swept all three doubles courts and built an early lead, spearheaded by senior Carissa Lai and junior Emily Wu’s win on doubles 1.
This was Emily’s first match back with the team after struggling with a hand injury earlier this school year. Her presence helped stabilize the doubles team as one of their top performers.
“Getting back on the court felt good,” Emily said. “I had a lot of fun playing and Carissa is a great partner. Although we’ve never played together before, we have really good chemistry and that helped our performance.”
In doubles 2, juniors Lucy Lai and Cory Medeiros had a dominating victory, winning 6–0, 6–0.
“Our team has been focusing on doubles,” Cory said. “I’ve been practicing my volleys and playing more doubles tournaments and the results are already showing.”
On the singles ladder, senior Pallavi Mallampati won singles 2 6–4, 6–2, securing the last needed point for the Eagles’ victory.
On singles 1, freshman Rebecca Wu made her varsity debut as the team’s best singles player and pushed her opponent to a third set. Unfortunately, she fell short, losing 4–6, 6–4, 8–10 in a long but close match. Mountain View also won singles 3 and 4 for a final score of 4–3.
Leading up to this rivalry faceoff, the team implemented new training methods. Led by new volunteer coaches Rodrigo and Marisue Mariona — the parents of player senior Bella Mariona — they’ve added structured conditioning to build endurance.
“Marisue is a really good coach with a lot of experience,” Lucy said. “And Rodrigo is helping us with our fitness. He is so positive and is always cheering for us.”
After falling just short of the state title last season, the team has set a clear goal for this fall: to win it all. The players say that they are confident in their level and depth.
“We want to win CCS. We want to win NorCal. We want to win States,” Cory said. “We have the team for it and we’re ranked no.1 on Universal Tennis.”
The Eagles are now 1–0 in league and will travel to Lynbrook High School Tuesday, Sep. 23, at 4 p.m. for their next match.
