Boys’ tennis: Cerritos wins Division IV, coach goes out as champion

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Cerritos beat Rowland, 10-8, in the Southern Section-Toyota Division IV championship game Wednesday at The Claremont Club.

The Dons, the No. 1-seeded team, which lost last season in the finals by two games, seemed to be headed to a tiebreaker after falling behind early on. Had it gone to tiebreaker Rowland, the No. 2 seed, would have won. Cerritos came back from being down 6-7, however, to win four of the last five games.

The title is the first in the school’s history, which allows longtime coach Jim Chapel, who announced his retirement before the season started, to walk away as a champion.

‘We’re lucky we didn’t need to go to games,’ Chapel said. ‘They would have worked us in games.’

With only three players returning from last year’s runner-up team, and three freshmen on the squad, Cerritos’ title comes as a bit of a surprise. Or, as Chapel said, ‘a true blessing.’

Rowland was tougher than what some Cerritos players were anticipating.

‘I expected Rowland to be good, but I didn’t expect them to be this good,’ said freshman Pilki Min, who’s singles win over Marcelo Bautista in the third round clinched the title.

The reason the match was so close was that Cerritos, which won all but one doubles match on the day, did very poorly in singles. Min, after surprisingly dropping his first match, provided Cerritos with its only two victories in singles.

That was part of the strategy, Chapel said. Not to do poorly on singles, but to dominate doubles.

‘I took my No. 3 singles player [Ganesh Alagappan] and put him in No. 2 doubles,’ he said. ‘I loaded up on doubles ... and that was the difference.’

-- Jaime Cardenas