Levy Loses Serve, Then Match : High school tennis: Taft senior is unable to force tiebreaker in first set, then goes quietly in City semifinal against Huerta of Chatsworth, 6-4, 6-1.

Late in the first set of his semifinal singles match in the City Section individual tournament on Wednesday, Dvir Levy’s serve was doing a lot of talking.

The Taft High senior was getting most of his first serves in. They were fast and hard, and they kept defending section champion Rafael Huerta of Chatsworth from attacking.

But the serves stopped making noise at exactly the wrong time--with Levy down one game and trying to force a tiebreaker in the first set at the Universal City Racquet Centre. The serve became silent and soon Levy was snuffed by Huerta, 6-4, 6-1.

Trailing, 5-4, Levy was serving and leading, 30-love, in the ninth game. But when he faulted his first serve on the next four points, Huerta pounced on him, breaking his service and winning the first set.

By then Levy knew he could not keep the fleet, sharpshooting Huerta off-balance without his serve. It would be be a matter of time before he would lose his fourth consecutive match this season to his Northwest Valley Conference rival.

“I couldn’t return his serve,” Huerta said. “All I could do was stay back and just make contact. But whenever he hit (his second serves) short, I would just step in and take the net.”

Broken serve, broken spirit for Levy.

“Whenever it’s 4-5 or 5-4 and I’m serving, I always have trouble,” Levy said. “I start thinking about having to put the first serve in, and then I miss.”

The talk on Levy’s side of the court turned inward in the second set. He started talking to himself in Hebrew.

“I was telling myself not to give up, that I could get back into it,” said Levy, who trailed, 5-1, in the first set against Palisades’ Babak Morshed in the quarterfinals and won.

But this was different. Huerta, unlike Morshed, burned Levy with drop shots at the net or bullets at the baseline.

With Huerta cruising in the second set, 4-1, Levy turned to him during a break and complained about the heat.

“This heat doesn’t bother me,” said Huerta, a native of Mexicali, Mexico, who moved to the Valley four years ago. “Right now, in Mexicali, it’s at least 100 degrees.”

Huerta then whistled two forehand winners past Levy to break his serve and closed out the match in the next game with a service winner. His opponent in Friday’s 2 p.m. final will be Arthur Tombakian of Marshall, who defeated Jay Jackson of University, 7-5, 6-3.

In doubles, Taft’s Brian Sobel and Jason Uslander defeated Joe Nguyen and Tom Yang of El Camino Real, 6-3, 6-4, and will face Oliver Catlin and Jeff Manson of Palisades in the final, also Friday at 2 p.m. Catlin and Manson eliminated Corey Carnes and Jay Schweitzer of El Camino Real, 6-4, 6-3.