SOUTHERN SECTION 4-A GIRLS’ TENNIS : Corona del Mar Gets Tough, Takes Title

The Corona del Mar High School girls’ tennis team knows how to handle tension. The Sea Kings are patient, keep a cool head and focus on their goal.

It all combined to give Corona del Mar a 12-6 victory over Miraleste in the Southern Section 4-A tennis final at the Claremont Club Tuesday.

Corona del Mar also defeated Miraleste in last year’s final.

The Sea Kings (23-1) swept all six final-round sets after the teams split 12 sets in the first two rounds. In Thursday’s semifinal against Estancia, Corona del Mar also swept the final round in winning, 14-4.

“If there is anything that’s going to go wrong in tennis, it’s emotional, a personality (conflict),” Corona del Mar Coach Gary Salazar said. “If you remove it (emotion), it’s more likely you’ll play your game and do better.”

Miraleste, the 4-A’s second-ranked team, has won two section titles in the last four years.

“I figured they’d pull out all the stops,” Salazar said of the sometimes irritating court mannerisms of Miraleste’s players. “They key is to play the ball, not the person.”

In a bitterly contested third-round doubles match between Corona del Mar’s Jackie O’Leary and Kristen Pollock and Miraleste’s Sonia Lae and Laura Bak-Boychuk, a match that Miraleste was losing, 3-2, in games, Bak-Boychuk chose to dispute a service call and interrupt play for five minutes while she went to find a linesman.

“You have to concentrate on the match, not the disputes,” said O’Leary, who added that the delay didn’t bother her. O’Leary and Pollock won a 12-point tiebreaker, 8-6, to win the set, 7-6.

Salazar believed the doubles matches were the keys to Corona del Mar’s victory. “His (Miraleste Coach Jim Hanson’s) strategy was he conceded the singles to us. The doubles was the key for them, and when we swept, that was it.”