HIGH SCHOOL TENNIS / CITY SECTION INDIVIDUAL SEMIFINALS : Taft Freshman Weiss to Face Stingy Huerta for Singles Title

If Jason Weiss of Taft High is to become the first freshman singles champion in City Section tennis history, he will have to beat one miserly opponent.

Raphael Huerta of Chatsworth, Weiss’ adversary in Friday’s final, needed only 40 minutes Wednesday to dispose of Bryan Newell of University, 6-0, 6-0, in a semifinal of the individual championships at The Racquet Centre of Universal City.

Huerta, who split a pair of matches with Weiss in the regular season, has lost only two games in four rounds during the playoffs. He has two 6-0, 6-0 victories and two 6-1, 6-1 victories.

Victory was not nearly as swift for Weiss, but it was just as impressive. With Huerta looking on, the Toreadors’ No. 2 player upended top-seeded Casey Wood of Granada Hills, 7-5, 6-3.

Weiss took 5-2 leads against Wood in each set. He led, 5-2, in the first set before Wood won three consecutive games.

“In the second set I played more offensively to get ahead of him and keep it that way,” Weiss said. “In the first set, instead of making him miss, I was seeing if he would miss. I wasn’t going for it.”

Wood (23-2), a junior, lost to Weiss for the second time this season. They split earlier matches, each winning at home.

“He came into this match on top of his game and it showed,” Wood said. “He controlled the points and dictated the pace. The difference was that he scored the big points. It was the same as our first match this season that he won.”

This will be the first appearance in the final for Huerta (14-2) and Weiss (15-3). Huerta, a junior, was eliminated in last season’s round of 16.

In doubles play, University’s Sung Kim and Ali Zarrinnam defeated Taft’s David Sobel and Jason Uslander, 6-4, 6-4. They will face Carson’s Roel and Rene DeVera in the final.

Championship and third-place matches will be played at 2 p.m. Friday at The Racquet Centre.

Sobel and Uslander, who defeated the fourth- and fifth-seeded teams to get to the semifinals, lost to a team made up of University’s Nos. 2 and 3 players.

“We knew it was going to be a tough match,” Sobel said. “We decided before the match to just have fun. Nobody thought we’d make it this far to begin with.”