Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy tennis captures Sunshine League doubles crown
A busy and successful season continued with another title for the Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy tennis team Thursday afternoon.
The Tologs No. 1 doubles squad of junior Holly MacVaugh and sophomore Margaux Blain captured a rare doubles championship at the Sunshine League individual finals held at the Warren Center Tennis Center.
“That has to be the first doubles title in 30 years,” Flintridge Sacred Heart Coach Ron Zambrano said. “It’s just been a long time, but it wasn’t surprising.
“The girls have been getting better every week and they went undefeated in league, so congratulations to them.”
MacVaugh and Blain were part of a Tologs five-person group who competed Thursday. Along with the doubles team of Breanna Ryan and Lana Sarkisian, Kate Hodges too part in the singles competition.
While MacVaugh and Blain received a battle in the day’s opening semifinal round, the top-seeded pair put away the second-seeded duo Sophia Kahn and Brittany Balouzian of Chaminade with ease in the championship, 6-1, 6-1.
With the victory, MacVaugh and Blain improved their record this season to 35-1, while earning advancement to the CIF Southern Section Individual Tournament, which gets underway Nov. 24.
Prior to the finals, MacVaugh and Blain received some strong resistance from the No. 4-seeded team of Madeline Samuelian and Skylar Waller from Los Angeles Notre Dame Academy before putting away the twosome, 6-4, 6-4.
“I was really happy for them,” Zambrano said of MacVaught and Blain. “I just wished it would have been an all-Sacred Heart finals.”
The individual season concluded for Ryan, Sarkisian and Hodges on Thursday.
Sarkisian and Ryan, the No. 3 doubles seed, were defeated by Kahn and Balouzian, 6-3, 6-3, to drop into the league third-place match.
With a chance to earn an alternate position to the individual tournament, Sarkisian and Ryan instead were beaten by Samuelian and Waller, 6-4, 7-5.
On the singles front, the fourth-seeded Hodges was also topped in semifinals action by Notre Dame Academy’s Leah Phillips, the No. 1 seed, 6-1, 6-1.
Hodges later was defeated in the third-place match, 6-2, 6-3.
Thursday’s action is part of a wild week that included the league’s preliminaries on Monday, a CIF Southern Section Division IV first-round playoff win versus St. Lucy’s on Wednesday and Friday’s second round match at Bishop Montgomery at 2 p.m.
“These girls have played a lot of tennis this week and this season,” Zambrano said. “We have another game again on Friday and hopefully some more after that.”
If Flintridge Sacred Heart (11-5) wins Friday, then it will advance to Monday’s quarterfinals.
Earlier this season, the Tologs went undefeated with an 8-0 record, which clinched the program its first league title since 1985.