Cooke sisters, BCHS dominate Lewis Cup matches
| Saturday, Oct 11 2008 02:28 AM
Last Updated Friday, Mar 27 2009 02:45 PM
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Bakersfield Christian's Lyndsay Cooke is one of the key players who makes the Eagles a favorite to win the Central Section Division V team title this season.
Shelby Cooke joined her sister, Lyndsay, in winning a singles match against Stockdale Friday, beating Julie Hutton in her Lewis Cup match.
Bakersfield Christian girls tennis coach Frank Thiessen was discussing how he thought his No. 1 player, junior Lyndsay Cooke, could improve upon last year's Central Section runner-up finish when he paused.
"Well," Thiessen said, gesturing at the next court, where Lyndsay's sister Shelby was working on a lopsided victory of her own, "unless this one gets in the way."
Led by sisters who are both section title contenders, the Eagles sucked the drama out of the weekend's Lewis Cup early Friday, beating the city's other top teams Liberty 5-1 and Stockdale 4-2 in Division I play at Stockdale's courts.
Lyndsay Cooke, who held a match point in the section singles final last year until succumbing to dehydration and Visalia-Redwood's Gabrielle Gatewood in three sets, had the most impressive day. Now a junior, Cooke beat Liberty's Estefania Limpias, who also was unbeaten, 6-0, 6-0 before blanking Stockdale No. 1 Frances Ellison as well.
"I was very nervous this morning," Lyndsay Cooke said. "I was not prepared to win that easily. And really, it wasn't that easily. They both played really well."
Which makes Cooke's play all the more impressive.
That, combined with freshman Shelby Cooke's victories at No. 2 singles against Liberty's Darcy Smith (6-2, 6-0) and Stockdale's Julie Hutton (6-1, 6-2) gave BCHS early 2-0 leads in both duals, which each consisted of four singles and two doubles matches.
The tournament continues today -- Garces, Clovis and Clovis West are the other Division I teams -- but Bakersfield Christian, with its 500-some students, has all but sewn up the team title against schools with 2,000-3,000 students.
"It's great for our school," Lyndsay Cooke said. "People underestimate us because we're so small, so it's great. We play weaker competition in our league, so this is such a big deal to us."
Although the six-match format didn't allow the Eagles to show it all off, Thiessen says they boast impressive depth as well. They proved that when Melissa Merrill and Jimmie Futrell beat Stockdale's Brooke Meeler and Maliha Ahmed 6-4, 6-4 at No. 2 doubles to seal victory.
"We're strong all the way through 10 players," Thiessen said. "This is the best group I've had in a long time."
The Cookes are at the forefront. Thiessen and Stockdale coach Dave Hillestad agree the sisters, and Gatewood, clearly are the three best singles players in the section.
Neither showed uncomparable groundstrokes or serves, but they were able to thoroughly frustrate quality opponents by feeding every ball back without sacrificing power or location -- and by never letting up, even in the case of Ellison.
"It's so hard to play Frances, because we're really good friends," Lyndsay Cooke said. "That is the worst I have ever felt winning a match."
And, in the increasingly likely scenario that she plays her sister for the section championship?
"Oh, man. That would be even harder," Lyndsay Cooke said.
