Glendale Community College women’s tennis falls short against state champion
GLENDALE — Things look considerably different since the Glendale Community College and Mount San Antonio women’s tennis teams met for the right to advance to the California Community College Athletic Assn. championship match last spring.
The programs met Thursday in a nonconference match at Glendale, both sporting virtually all-new rosters. The Mounties had two players left from last season and the Vaqueros had one.
Unfortunately for Glendale, it couldn’t get past Mt. San Antonio and suffered a 5-4 defeat.
“That’s the thing in that every year is different and there’s turnover in rosters,” said Glendale Coach Deo Sy, whose team fell against Mt. San Antonio in the Southern California Regional final last season. “Sometimes you have to rebuild and that’s what we are doing right now. Plus, we’ll get some people back who are recovering from injuries.
“That’s why you schedule teams from out of our conference. I schedule at least one match against a team from all of the other conferences [in Southern California]. You see how you do and what you need to work on once you begin conference play. In the end, you look to make the playoffs and maybe you’ll see one of these teams down the road.”
Glendale, which captured the Western State Conference championship last season, saw defending state champion Mount San Antonio build a 4-2 lead following singles action. That left the Vaqueros (1-3) needing to win all three doubles sets to knock off the Mounties (1-2).
Glendale got two doubles wins from Viktoriya Shumakova and Tsukimi Ono (8-2) and Alexa Mendez and Elen Chtchyan (8-3). The Mounties wrapped up the win after Judy Ung and Jessica Ulloa notched an 8-3 victory.
“We are making due with who we have and we just came up short today,” Sy said. “We’ll get some more people back and we will have some much-needed depth.
“We were able to get some good experience and it will set us up for later nicely.”
Melody Emmaanouilidi picked up a 7-5, 6-1 singles win for the Vaqueros.
Glendale’s other win in singles came from Shumakova (Crescenta Valley High). Shumakova, a former All-Area selection, lost to Connie Aranguiz in the first set. Shumakova held a 3-0 lead in the second set before Aranguiz retired because of an injury.
The Mounties got singles wins from Kristen Russo (6-3, 6-2), Ung (6-1, 6-2), Amanda Perez (6-4, 6-4) and Jasmin Bowright (6-1, 6-4).
