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La Cañada’s McKenzie sisters roll into semifinals

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TEMPLE CITY — For a second straight year, it will be a La Cañada High sister act at the Rio Hondo League Individual Tournament championships, albeit, with a twist.

The Spartans advanced their two top singles players, senior Cassie McKenzie and freshman Sophie McKenzie, as a doubles squad at Wednesday afternoon’s league preliminaries at Live Oak Park.

The top-seeded McKenzie sisters will face the No. 4 seed of San Marino’s Sophia Lee and Emily Hsiao at 12:30 p.m. Thursday for the right to advance to the championship final later that same afternoon.

“I’m having a lot of fun playing with my sister in my first [league tournament] experience,” Sophie McKenzie said. “This is also my sister’s last year, so it’s great to have an opportunity to play with her.”

For Cassie McKenzie, Thursday represents an opportunity to capture a second consecutive league doubles crown with a second sister after Cassie and Ally McKenzie (now at Saint Louis University) defeated San Marino’s Madeleine Gandawidjaja and Lee, 6-2, 6-0 last year.

Cassie and Sophie McKenzie’s journey to the semifinals began Tuesday evening at 7 when Spartans Coach Will Moravec submitted his final line-up card for the league’s tournament that included the McKenzies as the No. 1 doubles squad, among a couple of changes.

“The McKenzies have a comfort with each other, obviously,” Moravec said. “They asked to play together and I thought it was a good fit.”

The McKenzies opened the tournament with a bye in the first round.

The couple’s only action was an 8-0 victory over South Pasadena’s Anya Nicolaides and Sofia Tomasevic in the quarterfinals.

For Cassie McKenzie, the move to doubles made sense for Thursday and beyond.

“This was a CIF [playoff] decision definitely and we like to play doubles,” said Cassie McKenzie, who advanced to the CIF Individual semifinals with Ally last year. “Honestly, we want to go as far as possible in CIF. My sister and I went pretty far last year in CIF and it’s kind of upsetting how it ended.”

Perhaps the only disappointment Wednesday was that no other La Cañada singles or doubles players advanced to Thursday’s semifinals as the Spartans’ five other entrants were eliminated.

The senior duo of Emily Matuska and Sharyse Watanabe was defeated by Lee and Hsiao, 8-0, in the quarterfinals.

Matuska and Watanabe began Wednesday’s action with an 8-3 victory over South Pasadena’s Nour Mallat and Sheila Li. Matuska and Watanabe were the Spartans’ No. 1 duo throughout the regular season.

Maybe the best set of the day came in action between Nicolaides and Tomasevic and La Cañada’s Shannon Settles and Cathey Seo.

Both teams traded the lead and momentum before Nicolaides and Tomasevic pulled out a 9-8 (7-1) victory.

On the singles side, the Spartans did have one player advance into the second round in Solenn Matuska, who was defeated by South Pasadena’s Molly Round by an 8-1 score.

Solenn Matuska punched her ticket to the second round with an 8-0 win over Temple City’s Sanya Mital.

For most of the season, Solenn Matuska was one half of the Spartans’ No. 2 doubles squad along with Ashley Chun. Both players were split up by Moravec and placed in singles action Wednesday.

Chun had a quick afternoon, losing to South Pasadena’s Shannon Huang, 8-2, in the first round.

Nicole Sun was La Cañada’s final singles player and was bested in the first round, 8-3, by Monrovia’s Shantille Yu.

“I don’t think anyone was disappointed, they all had good seasons,” Moravec said. “They had a realistic goal of what they wanted to accomplish and they tried their best.”

In singles action, No. 1 seed Devon Jack of San Marino advanced to face No. 4 Round of South Pasadena in a rematch of last year’s title match in one semifinal, while Temple City’s Katherine Wu will take on San Marino’s Sabrina Lieu in another semifinal.

The other doubles semifinal bout pits Temple City’s Sandra Ngo and Morgan Leong against San Marino’s Gandawidjaja and Libby Chang.

No matter what happens Thursday, La Cañada will begin CIF team postseason action next week after finishing second in the Rio Hondo League.

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