Girls tennis has been a fall sport ever since it became a CIF San Diego Section sport in 1974, and boys tennis has been a spring sport since the San Diego Section was founded in 1960.
The coronavirus shutdown compressed the three normal CIF seasons into two for 2020-21, and boys and girls tennis were combined, including mixed doubles sets, for the first time in San Diego Section history.
Ramona High School’s tennis season began March 5 with a preseason 9-8 victory at Monte Vista High in Spring Valley.
“For us to win our first match was such a huge thing for us,” said Ramona coach Troy Romero.
Romero became girls coach in 2016, while Eddie Enriquez took over the boys program in 2019. Enriquez is also an assistant football coach, so Romero is coaching the combined team this year.
Enriquez had also brought football players to the Bulldogs’ tennis program, and since those athletes will be on the gridiron, Romero and athletic director Damon Baldwin worked to fill the boys’ positions.
“We had no boys two weeks before the season started,” Romero said.
Baldwin and Romero were able to find nine boys to join the team, although none of them have any previous varsity experience. Only two had ever played a competitive tennis match, Romero said.
Ramona does not have a boys junior varsity team this year. Some girls in the program will be playing at the junior varsity level, since the Bulldogs returned nine players from the fall 2019 team.
“They’re all solid. They’ve been playing for me for four years or three years,” Romero said.
All nine returning varsity girls are seniors, as is one first-year varsity girl. The other two varsity players are juniors. Two of the girls who were not on the 2019 varsity participated in that year’s Valley League tournament against varsity opposition.
“My roster should be pretty good,” Romero said.
In a normal boys or girls season, three singles players from each school play sets against each of the other school’s singles players while three doubles tandems from each team face each of their doubles counterparts. One team point is given for each set won, and if each team wins nine sets the tiebreaker of games won is used to determine the team winner.
This season’s format consists of three boys singles sets, three girls singles sets, three boys doubles sets, three girls doubles sets, and five mixed doubles sets. A tiebreaker isn’t a concern this year, Romero said.
A boy or girl is limited to two sets in a match, so a school must have at least seven boys and seven girls to avoid forfeiting any sets. Due to a shortage of Monte Vista boys, the Monarchs forfeited four sets against Ramona.
“For our first match we did legitimately win five,” Romero said. “I’m proud of our kids.”
Ramona’s girls accounted for all five of those wins. Although Kiera Duffy lost her singles set seven games to five Duffy and Ryan Din won a 6-2 doubles set. Emily McCrory and Charlotte Boss won a 6-1 set, which was also the score of the win by Michaela Pierce and Jami Sothman. Amanda Barrett was victorious in a 6-1 singles set while Chloe Breed prevailed in a 6-2 set.
McCrory and senior Samuel Bleakley faced a Monte Vista mixed doubles team consisting of a #1 singles player and a member of the Monarchs’ #1 doubles team. Although that ended in a 6-3 Monte Vista victory, Romero noted that the Ramona duo took three games from the top opponent.
“I was shocked and thrilled about that,” he said. “They played well.”
Bleakley is one of the two boys with previous match experience. The other, senior Blake Markee, teamed with senior and first-year varsity player Kiersten Douglas in a mixed doubles match. They lost by a 6-1 score.
The two junior girls, Emma Creason and Avalon Shelton, won their first two matches at the 2019 league tournament including a three-set victory over the sixth-seeded San Pasqual duo before losing in the quarterfinals and then in the first round of the backdraw to determine the fifth-place tandem which advanced to the CIF tournament. Creason and Shelton thus had four previous varsity matches and nine previous sets.
Creason teamed with freshman Noah Furchner and took two games during the 6-2 loss in their mixed doubles set. Shelton and sophomore Aidan Pedersen won their mixed doubles set by default. Monte Vista also took a 6-0 mixed doubles victory over seniors Camdyn Hartman and Thomas Brackman.
Furchner and Brackman won their boys doubles set by default, as did Pedersen and freshman Avery Baldridge. The shortage of Monte Vista players also provided sophomore Wyatt Barrett with a default boys singles win. Bleakley and Markee lost a 6-0 doubles set while freshmen Michael Feagin II and Orion Zimmerman were on the short end of 6-0 singles sets.
“The team looks really sharp,” Romero said.
Ramona’s first home match of the year is scheduled for Tuesday, March 16, when Rancho Buena Vista will visit the Riviera Oaks courts should weather and other circumstances permit.
The Valley League for tennis this season consists of Ramona, Escondido, Fallbrook, San Pasqual, Valley Center, and Vista. The Bulldogs are scheduled to begin league competition April 6 at Vista.