More than 40 high school (and future high school) players competed in the Cate Spring Junior WTN Tournament over the weekend, with some local names featuring in each of the three finals matches.
In Girls’ Singles, Cate School sophomore Elly Edwards took the title over finalist Adhya Reddy-Hoelle with an emphatic 6-0 victory. The win in the single-elimination playoff avenged her tie-break loss to Reddy-Hoelle in the Group Stage of the girls draw, held earlier in the day.
Cate has now claimed the girls’ singles title in both editions of the 2026 series, with Edwards’ fellow sophomore Cate teammate, Jade Wang, taking the winter title.
Boys’ Doubles was nearly an all-Cate affair in the winter event, with 3-of-4 players in the final able to walk across campus from their dorm rooms for the tournament. This time around, it was 2 teams from San Marcos High School and 2 from Viewpoint in Calabasas who battled for the final 4 positions in the doubles compass draw.
In the end, it was Levi Reece and Jacob Cantrell from SMHS who took the title over Viewpoint’s Vance Resnick and Gavin Holmes. The San Marcos team battled back from 0-3 and 2-5 down in a determined fashion to claim the title, winning the final 5 games for an exciting 7-5 finish.
Meanwhile, on the next court over, their high school teammates Paolo Borgioli and Eliot Gray nabbed third place from Jonah Windisch and Casey Bernstein of Viewpoint. Cate’s top doubles performance came from sophomore/freshman duo Alex Danely/Nolan Hsing, who battled back from a first round loss to take 5th place.
Singles play for the 32-player boys’ draw began on Saturday with players competing in 8 grouping of 4 players, round robin-style. The group stage yielded 16 players for the Sunday afternoon single-elimination playoff.
Amongst those who advanced were 3 middle school entrants who all kept the high school boys on their toes throughout the tournament. In the Round-of-16, Ryder Eberz battled to 4-6 against the top seed, Harry Pedersen went 5-7 against the #10 seed, and Tyler Spaulding also managed to play some great points against the eventual champion.
Elsewhere in the draw, Oliver Tande took a pair of wins and defeated the #3-seeded Gavin Holmes en-route to a semifinal showing. The Laguna Blanca junior went one better than his performance in the winter edition, where he also defeated a #3-seeded player to reach the quarterfinal round, before falling to eventual champion Kakeru Hirofuji (Cate).
The other semifinalist was Jonah Windisch, who matched his semifinals performance in morning doubles competition. Windisch took a 6-4 victory over Cate junior James He and another 6-4 win over Nicholas Christman, a junior at Atascadero High School.
With top-seeded junior Lucas Forry of Santa Barbara High School and #2-seed Vance Resnick of Viewpoint reaching his second final of the day, the battle for the title was sure to be a thriller.
The set featured very close competition, with neither player able to pull out a significant lead. At 4-4, Forry broke Resnick, earning a chance to serve the match out, but Resnick fought off a set point to continue the back-and-forth affair. Eventually, the two found themselves locked in a tie-breaker to decide the title. Even then, the two lefties stayed close in the early-going, trading blows both from the baseline and at net. Finally, Resnick managed to close out the match 7-4 by winning the final 3 points to take the championship and finish the weekend 7-0 in singles play.
As a tournament director, I was honored to have such an outstanding group of boys and girls tennis players competing across the weekend. The competition was fierce, exciting, and enthusiastic and we had great representation from a variety of coastal California players from Atascadero to Malibu.
I also want to take the opportunity to again recognize our 5 Sportsmanship Award winners, who helped save the day Sunday morning when we had a wet court delay; Vance Resnick, Gavin Holmes, Jonah Windisch, Ryder Eberz, and Harry Pedersen all earned $25 Tenniswarehouse gift cards when they showed up early and volunteered to help push puddles and get the courts dry so the morning matches could get on court.
While we had some great examples of sportsmanship during the matches, I think it’s important this time to recognize these guys for their proactiveness in helping. A core element of sportsmanship is doing the right thing or making the extra effort to be kind, even when it might not seem like anyone is watching. The mentality of being a good sport should extend beyond the match, to the school or club, where inevitably it can also then become a part of who we are outside the tennis world, too. Thanks guys!
The spring edition of the Cate WTN Tournament Series is round two of a three-part series, which will conclude with a fall edition on October 10-11. I look forward to seeing many familiar faces and hopefully some new additions to the mix in the fall.
Trevor Thorpe – Tournament Director
Thorpe Tennis 