Cate Girls’ Tennis continues to pick up steam headed into the big show-down with San Marcos High.

Cate v. La Reina, 16-2 Win

Cate took another overwhelming victory last Thursday against Tri-Valley League
opponent La Reina.

Sophomore Grace Fuss led the charge with a sweep, including a convincing 6-1 victory over Tiara Nourishad, who is currently ranked #85 in California amongst juniors. Nourishad rallied to collect La Reina’s two wins on the day.

All eleven active players on the Cate roster picked up at least one win on the day.

Freshman Fritze Mayer and junior Kate Tunnell swept their three sets (6-0, 6-1, 6-0), and in total, Cate dropped just 10 games in 9 sets of doubles play.

I was very pleased with our execution in this match. We came in with a strategy, both for how we wanted to play, and how we wanted to handle the intangibles, and the girls were great from start to finish.

Cate v. Foothill Tech, 15-3 Win

Cate moved to 7-0 on the season with a win over the previously 7-0 Foothill Tech Dragons. Grace Fuss played a masterfully heady three sets without dropping a single game. Doubles pairings Carol Cai/Sarah Polowczak and Janice Ng/Jennifer Soh added three-set sweeps in a similarly dominant fashion.

In the first round, Fritze Mayer and Kate Tunnell won a 9-7 tie-break set that last more than and hour, while substitutes Mia Foster and Piper Brooks took over in the third round for a win of their own. This marks the fourth time in seven matches that every Cate player in uniform has won at least one set in the match.

This was the best match of the season for us. Foothill is looking very much like our top competitor for the Tri-Valley League title this year and the girls really stepped it up. Frankly, it’s pretty rare to see every player on any team firing on all cylinders simultaneously, but today we had that level.

The timing is good, because I know we’re going to be challenged by San Marcos later this week. Every year we inch a bit closer to getting the W over that team, 8-10 two years ago and 9-9 last season. They’re a strong team and it’s going to be a fun match, guaranteed!

Cate plays Carpinteria High on Thursday and then San Marcos on Friday, both at home at 3:30pm.