Wolverines Double Up to Reach the Final

As it turned out, the Harvard-Westlake High boys’ tennis team stacks up pretty well.

The Wolverines and Corona del Mar stacked singles players in their doubles lineups attempting to gain an advantage, and Harvard-Westlake beat the defending-champion Sea Kings on games, 82-76, after the teams tied, 9-9, in sets in a Division I semifinal playoff match Thursday at Studio City Golf and Tennis.

The No. 2-seeded Wolverines qualified for their first Division I championship match. They won the Division II title last season and Division III championships in 1997 and ’98.

“That’s the only goal,” said senior Allan Haldeman of Harvard-Westlake, who played No. 1 doubles with Aron Gortman, usually a singles player.

“Our goal has always been to win a [Division I] championship.”

The teams were tied, 3-3, after the first round of round-robin play, and knotted, 6-6, after the second round but Harvard-Westlake held a 53-50 edge on games.

“This was a perfect match,” Gortman said. “It was really high-level tennis, just a great match.”

Harvard-Westlake (25-3-1) plays top-seeded Peninsula in the final on Wednesday at the Claremont Club in Claremont. The Panthers, who routed Los Alamitos, 15-3, in another semifinal, have beaten the Wolverines twice this season.

“Peninsula is going down,” said David Frankel, another Harvard-Westlake singles player who competed in doubles.

“This was amazing. I love these kind of matches. We were going for every single point.”

Playing No. 3 doubles, Frankel and Jon Rubenstein defeated the Sea Kings’ No. 1 team of Peter Kulmaticki and Mike Bean, 6-3, in a third-round set

to give Harvard-Westlake a 9-8 edge.

No. 3 singles player Jesse Ferlianto looked like he was going to clinch the victory for Harvard-Westlake, but he couldn’t hold on to a 4-1 lead against Brian Morton and lost, 7-6 (7-2), in the last set.

“It was a tight one, just like we expected,” Coach Tim Mang of Corona Del Mar said.

“I really thought my doubles would do better. You don’t like to lose the close ones, but it was a great match.”

Andrew Rosenfeld of Harvard-Westlake won two sets at No. 1 singles. Ferlianto also won two sets.

Corona del Mar is 21-7.