La Cañada High girls’ tennis still can’t get by San Marino

SAN MARINO — Both the La Cañada High girls’ tennis coach and his counterpart at San Marino shuffled their lineup for their first Rio Hondo League meeting of the season Tuesday.

In an attempt to win sets in doubles, something his team had a problem with last season when it lost to the Titans by two points, Spartans Coach Will Moravec moved defending league singles champion Allie McKenzie to doubles.

San Marino Coach Melwin Pereira also moved one of his top singles player, Madeline Gandawidjaja, to doubles.

The move paid off for La Cañada, as McKenzie and her partner, Elizabeth Lee, won all three of their sets. The team also received a sweep in singles from Cassie McKenzie. Unfortunately for the Spartans, they could muster just one set win from the rest of their lineup, falling to the host Titans, 11-7.

La Cañada (6-4, 1-1 in league) was attempting to knock off the Titans (3-2, 2-0), who have had a stranglehold on the league championship in recent years, capturing seven straight titles.

“It is so tough because as good as all these players are, it still comes down to mistakes,” Moravec said. “We just switched Allie to doubles to try and get some much-needed points. A lot of these top girls in singles are very close in ability, so sometimes it just comes down to who is better that day. We thought we would give this a try and see what happens.”

Allie McKenzie said the coach left it up to her and Cassie as to which one would play doubles Tuesday. Teaming up with Lee, the duo earned a sweep, 6-0, 5-5 (7-5), 6-4. With the match already in hand for San Marino, the coaches agreed to play a tiebreaker although the set was tied, 5-5.

“I actually like playing doubles,” Allie said. “I really don’t mind it at all. Cassie wanted to play singles more so we agreed to let her do that.”

Cassie, on her 16th birthday, gave herself a present in the form of a 6-2, 7-6 (7-4), 6-0 sweep.

Cassie was involved in the most exciting set of the afternoon against San Marino’s Devon Jack. McKenzie enjoyed a 5-4 lead until Jack battled back to force a tiebreaker, 7-6. McKenzie began strongly in the tiebreaker, going up, 4-1. However, Jack battled back and when she broke serve the Titan had knotted the score at 4-4. But McKenzie regained control, winning the next three games and closed out the set when Jack double faulted, 7-4.

“I was making it hard on myself, because whenever I would go up, I would push the ball instead of hitting through it,” Cassie McKenzie said. “When I noticed I was doing that in the tiebreaker I was so mad that I was like ‘Stop doing that Cassie, come on now.’ And that helped and I started stepping through my balls.”

The only other set win for the Spartans came from Sara Choe at No. 2 singles, 6-2.

San Marino won five sets in singles and six in doubles.