Mater Dei’s Esmero Advances to Semifinals

For the second consecutive year, Mater Dei’s Melissa Esmero is the only county singles player left standing after two rounds of the Southern Section individual singles championships.

Esmero, who has signed with USC, struggled to beat Woodbridge’s Susanna Lingman in the first round, 7-6 (7-3), 6-2. Then she breezed past Agoura’s Brooke Borishoff, 6-2, 6-4, in the quarterfinals Thursday at Balboa Bay Club Racquet Club in Newport Beach.

Esmero, no longer just a baseline counterpuncher, defeated Lingman and Borishoff by mixing up the pace of her shots and coming to the net at opportune times.

“I’m going into college tennis soon, so I have to start coming to the net,” said Esmero, who will play San Marino’s Andra Yung in this morning’s semifinals. “I just stayed in the point and came in if I saw a short shot. It’s pretty simple.”

It wasn’t quite that simple for the other five county singles players whose seasons ended Thursday. Lingman, Laguna Beach sophomore Ashley Maddocks and Santa Margarita senior Erin Miller lost in the first round. Saddleback junior Kim Nguyen and Newport Harbor sophomore Natalie Braverman won a match before bowing out.

Nguyen, a junior, fell to last year’s runner-up, San Marino junior Luana Magnani, 6-3, 7-5. Magnani, ranked fifth nationally in the girls’ 16s, was not seeded because of a section rule that says a league runner-up cannot be seeded higher than the league champion. Magnani lost to her teammate, Yung, in the Rio Hondo League finals. Because Yung was unseeded, Magnani could not be seeded.

Nguyen, who beat Miller, 6-2, 6-1, in the first round, didn’t seem to mind that she met Magnani in the quarterfinals. But she was bothered to learn that she literally gave away a crucial game early in the second set. Magnani was giving Nguyen the balls back after she thought her serve had been broken. But Nguyen corrected her, saying the score was 40-15. Magnani then won the next four points to even the set at 1-1.

“I’m almost sure I lost that game,” Magnani said. “I keep track of the score pretty well. She definitely helped me out a little bit.”

Magnani said Nguyen also played several second serves that were long.

“I know it was a loss, but it was really a learning experience for me,” Nguyen said. “I had a lot of opportunities, where I was up 40-0, and I just couldn’t close it out.”

Braverman, who is undecided about her high school tennis future, was ousted by Catherine Heppel of Temecula Chaparral, 6-3, 7-5. Braverman was a point away from sending the match to a third set. But Heppel rallied to tie the set at 5-5. Then in the next game, Braverman’s body simply gave out. She began cramping in her leg and she was forced to take a five-minute injury timeout.

Heppel, who will play Magnani in the other semifinal, didn’t dictate many of the points, but she was the steadier player.

“I don’t even think she hit any winners,” Braverman said. “There were a lot of short balls that I should have put away. That hurt me.”

Notes

The county fared much better in doubles play. The top two seeded teams, Adriana Hockicko and Evangalina Soriano of Woodbridge and Kristen Case and Jenny Meyer of Newport Harbor, lost just five games in advancing to the semifinals. Hockicko and Soriano will meet Dana Hills’ Kady Pooler and Chelsy Thompson, who upset Palos Verdes Peninsula’s Caitlin Blashaw and Christie Tjong, 4-6, 6-2, 6-4.

“We’re a little surprised to be here,” Thompson said. “But we were motivated. We wanted to miss school tomorrow. I have an AP Biology test and I haven’t studied.”