Different Story for Westlake

Three times in a row the Westlake High boys’ tennis team lost in Southern Section championship matches.

The Warriors defeated nemesis Beverly Hills, 10-8, to claim the Southern Section Division III title at long last Wednesday at the Claremont Club.

Westlake, making its fourth consecutive appearance in a division final, snapped a three-year losing streak in title matches.

“We finally did it,” said Matt Pardee, a Westlake junior who teamed with freshman Jackson Ellis to win two of three doubles sets.

It was a perfect ending to a perfect season for the top-seeded Warriors (21-0), who lost to Beverly Hills in the Division III final last season and at the Division II level in 1998, and fell to Harvard-Westlake in the Division III final in 1997.

“This feels great,” Pardee said. “We had seniors who were like, ‘Can’t we just win it once?’ We just felt like this was our chance to win it.

“It was a good match. Everybody did well and did their part.”

Pardee and Ellis played a large part in the second round, when the match turned in Westlake’s favor.

They earned one of two critical doubles victories in the round to help the Warriors break a 3-3 tie and take an 8-4 advantage that proved too much for the Normans (21-9) to overcome.

But doubles wasn’t the only place where the Warriors won key points.

Westlake won seven of nine singles sets, including three by No. 1 player Alex Yaftali, one of five seniors making his fourth appearance in finals.

Yaftali defeated Brian Swatt, Beverly Hills’ best player, 6-4, to start the match, followed up with a 6-1 victory over Justin Gordon, the Normans’ No. 2 player , and a 6-2 victory over freshman Steven Eidelman.

Yaftali’s sweep was the only one for Westlake.

“I didn’t want what happened the last three years to happen again,” Yaftali said. “I think we were a little cautious this time, but confident.

“We’ve thought we had the better team the last three years, but we came up short. So I was happy we won, but it was more like a feeling of relief.”

Westlake also got two victories each from No. 2 player Narbe Zohrabi and No. 3 Garrett Wong, a senior who returned to the team this season after sitting out last year.

“It was good timing,” Wong said with a grin. “I tried to put more pressure on myself to come through [Wednesday]. I knew singles would be really important.”

The match was tied, 3-3, after the first round, but Westlake took control in the second round, after Yaftali, Zohrabi and Wong all won, while Pardee and Ellis defeated Raymond Hekamat and Brandon Richman, 6-4, and the No. 2 doubles team of Billy Horak and Billy Corso won, 6-4, over Anthony Pham and Tyler Reichwald, No. 3 team for Beverly Hills.

Besides beating Hekamat and Richman, Beverly Hills’ No. 2 team in the second round, Ellis and Pardee defeated Pham and Reichwald, 6-4.

“We just realized we had to do it right now,” Pardee said. “We had to turn it around.”

Beverly Hills was unable to turn the tide once its singles players--including Swatt--began to struggle.

“I wanted to be aggressive, but I came out too aggressive and it cost me two sets,” Swatt said.

“I never got into it. I had a lot of mis-hits, I wasn’t seeing the ball well, and I wasn’t running well. I just didn’t play well.”

Westlake, on the other hand, did.

“This was our goal for the whole season,” Coach Bernard Kuai of Westlake said.

“We didn’t celebrate winning the league or anything. This was our job this year. I was thinking about it. Can you imagine if we lost four times in a row? I’m just very happy for the kids. We deserved to win it.”

In other championship matches, Peninsula defeated Harvard-Westlake, 12-6, in Division I. Irvine University (20-0) scored an 11-7 victory over Brentwood in Division II.

San Marino (23-2) won its fifth consecutive Division IV title, topping San Luis Obispo (23-1) for the second consecutive year, 11-7.

Chadwick won, 10-8, over Pasadena Poly in Division V for its first boys’ title.