Cate d. Carpinteria 17-1

Cate performed well in both singles and doubles during their 17-1 victory today at Carpinteria High.

Sophomore Sarah Polowczak got her first singles start of the season and came out of the gates at a full gallop with three 6-0 sets. Grace Fuss continued her impressive freshman season, picking up another sweep, and Katherine Grossman added two sets to the singles tally.

In doubles, Cate got a sweep from Eva Herman/Janice Ng, while Summer Christensen and Carol Cai traded their usual partners for a series of new partnerships that yielded two more clean sweeps of doubles play.

Annie Lu and Sydney Burton picked up their first wins of the season, both substituting into the doubles lineup in the third round of play.

San Marcos d. Cate 9-9 (61-80)

In a battle between the Santa Barbara/Ventura area’s two best girls’ tennis teams, D1 opponent San Marcos High School prevailed on games after the match went the distance with a 9-9 tie.

San Marcos has two very high-caliber singles players (Yuka Perera, #140 in her class in the US; Kelly Coulson, #420 in her class in the US), so this was a tough matchup for us. We tried to neutralize some of the advantage San Marcos has with Yuka and Kelly by stacking our #2 singles player Jackie Cai into doubles.

Jackie played with her sister Carol Cai and picked up the clean sweep. Summer Christensen and Sarah Polowczak also swept to remain undefeated this season (15-0 as a pairing, both 21-0 overall) at the #1 position. Eva Herman and Janice Ng added 2 sets to the total, taking their season record to 17-4 overall.

In singles, Grace Fuss lost twice in a match for the first time this season, but picked up a 6-0 victory against the San Marcos #3. She now sits at 17-4 overall at the #1 singles position.

I’m extremely proud of my team and the way we competed today. We consider San Marcos to be probably the strongest team in the Santa Barbara/Ventura County area and our team pushed them to the limit. We don’t even consider this a loss so much as proof that our little school of 250 students can punch above our weight class.

Cate is now 6-1 on the season while San Marcos moves to 11-4.