Vaquero duo in semis
Sevana Zargarian and Samantha Sismundo started off the day by checking off a major goal, but their work at the Southern California Regionals remained far from done.
The Glendale Community College No. 1 doubles team, which also teamed together at Glendale High, won a quarterfinal match Friday afternoon at the Marriott Desert Springs in Palm Springs to secure a spot in today’s semifinal round at 11:30 a.m.
“We’ve got a chance for Southern Cal,” said Vaqueros Coach Bob Donaghy, whose top tandem will take part in an All-Western State Conference final along with the No. 1 teams from Ventura and Santa Monica and Ventura’s No. 2 team. “It’s tough out here, but we’ve got a chance, so it’s good.”
Earlier in the day, the duo’s 6-2, 6-4 win in the round of 16 over host College of the Desert’s No. 2 team of Haley Briggs and Leticia Vieira guaranteed it a berth in the state tournament, which will be played at Balboa Tennis Club in San Diego beginning on Wednesday.
“It was tough, we were really on our game today, on point,” Zargarian said. “We knew that was the qualifying round, so we were very focused, we wanted to just win.”
The pair advanced to the regional semifinals with a 6-2, 6-4 win over Palomar’s No. 2 team of Leizl Galleisky and Pam Cademas.
“We’ve had better days, but I guess we just knew how to finish it off,” Sismundo said. “We did what we needed to do, basically.”
Now Zargarian and Sismundo will square off with Ventura’s No. 2 team of Sonia Landeros and Jessica Worring, who knocked off the top-seeded team from Santa Barbara City College on Friday.
“It seems like they’ve stepped up their game, which is fine because we will handle the competition gladly,” Zargarian said. “We’re excited to play them and see how we do.”
Zargarian and Sismundo beat Landeros and Worring in a regular season meeting earlier this year.
“We beat them, but they look like a different team this time around than the beginning of the season,” Sismundo said. “It’s going to be a challenge for sure.”
Zargarian also played in a round of 16 singles match Friday, where she fell to top-seeded Juliana Bacelar out of Ventura, 6-1, 6-1.
“I’ve played her in the past and I think I have had better days against her,” Zargarian said. “You’re going up against the No. 1 seed, so I was just trying to have fun with it and play my best and see where it took me.”
Following a first-round bye, Zargarian and Sismundo opened the regionals on Thursday with a 6-2, 6-2 second-round win over a team from Victor Valley College.
Glendale’s Sofia Tavitian and Phoebe Minette, who also had a first-round bye, did not make it out of the second round Thursday with a loss to Palomar’s Brittany Scism and Tori Bohart, 6-4, 6-3.
In singles action on Thursday, Zargarian defeated a player from Rio Hondo College in the second round without dropping a game, but Tavitian lost to an El Camino College player, 4-6, 6-4, 10-6, after notching a first-round win over Sahara Miller of Mount San Jacinto College, 6-0, 6-2.
“Even though we made it to state, we want to win regionals,” Zargarian said. “We just knew what we had to do.
“We’ve been working on coming up to the net a lot more, finishing the points.”