Six advance to Rio Hondo League semifinals for La Cañada boys’ tennis
Due partially to maneuvering and partially to excellent play, the La Cañada boys’ tennis program qualified a pair of singles and doubles entrants past Wednesday afternoon’s Rio Hondo League preliminaries at Arcadia County Park.
Spartans singles players Reid Schreck and William Lan earned advancement to Thursday’s semifinals at 1 p.m., while the doubles team of twin brothers Gabriel and Gerard Llanes and the doubles pair of Lucas Chmielewski and Phillip Lan are also moving on.
“We had a really good day and I’m happy with how the team performed,” La Cañada Coach Will Moravec said. “The big question for us was whether [San Marino’s] Bryce Pereira and Connor Lee would play in singles or doubles. They’re the two best players in league and that decision would impact us.”
Pereira and Lee entered the Rio Hondo League tournament as the league’s top-seeded doubles team after a busy weekend in which the pair captured the Ojai Valley Tennis Tournament on Saturday.
The duo’s void in singles created a vacuum that Moravec hopes will be filled by junior Schreck and sophomore William Lan.
Schreck was awarded the league’s second seed, received a bye and then defeated Temple City’s James Peng, 8-6, to advance to the quarterfinals against San Marino’s No. 3-seeded Andrew Wong.
In the upper bracket, fourth-seeded William Lan notched a couple of victories, beginning with an 8-1 triumph over South Pasadena’s Jason Chai. He then topped San Marino’s Alex Ko, 8-2, to set up a semifinal versus San Marino’s top-seeded Leo Wang.
Should William Lan and Schreck win, that would set up an all-La Cañada singles showdown for the Rio Hondo League title.
“We’ve never had that before where we had two players battling for the championship,” Moravec said. “It would be incredible if they both won their semifinals matches to have that. I would look forward to that.”
The championship match would start roughly 30 minutes after the conclusion of the semifinals.
Other than winning championships, the other prize at stake is a berth to CIF Southern Section Individual Tennis Tournament, which begins May 25 at one of five sites.
To automatically qualify, a player needs to finish in the top two in league.
On the doubles side, maybe the best chance lies with the second-seeded duo of senior Chmielewski and sophomore Phillip Lan.
The pair commenced with a bye and then topped San Marino’s twosome of Chris Wu and Auberon Lai, 8-3, which earned the Spartans a berth into Wednesday’s semifinal.
In the semifinal, the Spartans’ duo will face No. 3-seeded San Marino teammates John Carter and Allan Liu.
Maybe the biggest underdog Thursday is the La Cañada Llanes duo, as the brothers will take on Pereira and Lee in the other semifinal.
The Llanes brothers reached the semifinals by first knocking off South Pasadena’s Lucas Hulberg and Andrew Lee, 8-1.
In the quarterfinals, the La Cañada duo ran into fellow twin teammates Ian and Nick Lee. Though the Lees served for victory at 7-6, the Llanes brothers rallied for a gritty 9-7 win.
“It was such a well-balanced match and you could see it was pretty even,” Moravec said. “All you ask for as a coach is that the match was hard-fought and it was.”
Twitter: @campadresports
