In its last dual meet of the regular season, the Santa Monica High girls’ tennis team defeated Beverly Hills 10-8.
“We lost our first dual meet against Beverly Hills earlier in the season, but the girls really came to play this time around,” said Coach Wilston Poon. “We also made some adjustments in the line up, moving some singles players to doubles and visa versa. That made us a more competitive as a team.”
Christine Maddox led the charge winning each of her three singles matches, while singles players Carly Brown and Lucy Walsh also added wins for the team. The doubles duos of Kayla Shapiro/Rebecca Sherouse and Annie Volovik/Natalie Yeliokumson each won two matches.
Beverly Hills and Santa Monica ended the regular season with identical league records of 7-1. However, based on a tiebreaker, Beverly Hills was named the champion of the Ocean League with Santa Monica placing second. Both teams have qualified for the CIF tournament and Santa Monica has a top-ten ranking in CIF for the second year in a row. “The way the team is performing now, we have a good chance to go deep into the tournament,” explained Poon.
The Santa Monica players followed up the win against Beverly Hills by taking both the singles and doubles titles in the Ocean League individual tournaments. Christine Maddox won the singles championship and Kayla Shapiro/Rebecca Sherouse won the doubles. “Nobody around here can even remember a season in which Santa Monica players won both titles,”said Poon. While Kayla won the doubles last year with a different partner, Christine is the first singles champion that we have had in a very long time. Anyway, this all bodes well for us in the CIF tournament. Not only did Christine, Kayla and Rebecca win individual championships, but our other singles and doubles players played well too.”
