Burbank High girls’ tennis reigns at Pacific League finals

PASADENA — While the Glendale and Crescenta Valley high girls’ tennis programs certainly made an impact locally at Wednesday afternoon’s Pacific League individual tennis finals, when it comes to best in show, nobody topped Burbank’s Bulldogs.

The Bulldogs captured what is believed to be the program’s first-ever dual win as senior Lilit Vardanyan claimed her second straight singles title and the doubles team of Nicole Merritt and Yana Paryniuk also clinched a doubles crown at Pasadena High.

PHOTOS: Burbank High girls’ tennis takes both singles, doubles titles at Pacific League finals

“I honestly don’t think that’s ever happened,” Burbank Coach Loi Phan said. “For so many years we had a girl finish second and then we had Lilit win last year, but I don’t think we’ve had both ever on either boys or girls.”

Merritt and Paryniuk entered as the tournament’s top seed and received all they could handle from the second-seeded Arcadia twosome of Tina Yueh and Mintra Janopus, before registering a wild 6-2, 6-7 (1-7), 11-9 victory.

“I was so nervous and I just wanted it to end and we win,” Paryniuk said. “Now I’m excited for CIF.”

Neither Burbank’s or Arcadia’s duo seemed ready to win the doubles championship as each squad double-faulted three times before Merritt connected on a forehand winner to knot the tie-breaker at 9.

Arcadia committed consecutive errors then, with the second delivering the Bulldogs a championship.

“It just feels great to win,” Merritt said. “We knew it was going to be tough, so we tried our best.”

Merritt and Paryniuk punched their tickets to the finals in another hotly-contested win, 7-6 (7-5), 6-4 over Arcadia’s duo of Aubrie Weissbach and Sydney Tran.

On the singles side, while the matchup of Burbank senior Vardanyan and Glendale freshman Natalie Shamma was a slight deviation from the script, there was no surprise ending.

Vardanyan put away a surging Shamma, 6-3, 6-2 for the Burbank player’s second straight championship.

“I was nervous coming into this year because I knew that the league’s singles competition was better than last year,” said Vardanyan, who topped Arcadia’s Anna Qui, 6-2, 6-0 in the semifinals. “Natalie played great today and she’s only a freshman.”

The 13-year-old Shamma not only impressed her opponents, but her coach Bob Davidson.

“You look at that match and it was a lot closer than that score,” Davidson said. “She went to deuce a lot of times against the league’s top senior. I’m proud of what she accomplished.”

Shamma’s consolation is her advancement to the CIF Southern Section Individual tournament as all league first- and second-place players and teams earned a bid, while third-place entrants are listed as alternates.

Shamma also took pleasure in upsetting Arcadia’s No. 1 player, second-seeded Angelica Zhou, 1-6, 6-3, 10-6 in the semifinals.

The match included several peculiar moments, such as when Zhou surrendered consecutive games in falling behind, 3-2, in the second set and then decided to take a bathroom break which lasted longer than five minutes. Zhou also unexpectedly walked off the court to change rackets at another point in the second set.

“This was a revenge match for me,” said Shamma, who had lost in two previous match-ups versus the Apaches ace. “I wanted to beat her.”

Interestingly enough, a third-place match between Arcadia’s Zhou and Qui never materialized on Wednesday, leaving the league’s single alternate position in limbo should a player be needed.

As for Crescenta Valley, the duo of senior Annie Park and junior Ashley An called it a season.

The pair fell short of advancing to the doubles finals in falling to Yueh and Janopus, 7-6 (8-6), 6-1 in the semifinals.

“We just had bad luck on the last point in the tiebreaker,” Park said of the game-winning point of the first set. “We felt like we hit it inbounds and Arcadia called it out of bounds and we didn’t challenge them when we should have.”

With a chance to take an alternate position, Park and An then fell to Arcadia’s Weissbach and Tran, 8-3, in pro-set scoring.

“I think against Arcadia [in the semifinals], they were a talented team, but made a lot of mistakes and we almost took advantage,” Crescenta Valley Coach Sam Hyun said. “Once they got that win, they kept going in the second set and it was tough for us.”