PREP TENNIS : This Match Never Had a Chance

Apparently the Garden Grove-Los Alamitos nonleague boys’ tennis match just wasn’t supposed to happen. The first meeting on March 7 was suspended because of rain after one round and Tuesday’s rescheduled match at Garden Grove never got started.

Garden Grove Coach Kevin Starnes and Los Alamitos Coach Mike McCutcheon couldn’t agree whether to continue the March 7 match or start it over, so they decided not to officially play it. With ominous clouds and lightning nearby, the teams did play some practice sets, but nothing will be reported to the Southern Section office.

Starnes, whose team trailed the earlier match, 4-2, after one round, wanted to start over because two of his players were not with the varsity in March.

“It’s hard to continue a match when the same players are not playing,” he said.

Starnes also didn’t want to jeopardize his No. 4 ranking in Southern Section Division II against Los Alamitos, an unranked Division II team.

But McCutcheon had hoped to continue the match in progress at the beginning of the second round.

“Our league (the Empire) goes by the USTA rules, and they say to continue it at the same point,” McCutcheon said.

Seeing a possible conflict arising, Starnes called Bill Clark, the Southern Section administrator for tennis, on Tuesday.

“Clark said it was a gray area and that they had no rule for it, so he told us to decide it,” Starnes said.

And both coaches decided simply not to decide.

“Since I was the home team, I could have decided to default the match to us, but I didn’t want to do that,” Starnes said. “So we played it for fun, and there’s no hard feelings either way. I guess you could call this the match that wasn’t meant to be.”