Limpias sets sights on section singles title
| Thursday, Oct 09 2008 01:47 AM
Last Updated Friday, Mar 27 2009 02:45 PM
LEWIS CUP
When: Friday and Saturday
Where: Stockdale (Division I), Bakersfield, Ridgeview, Frontier, Bakersfield Christian
Time: Play starts at 8 a.m. at each site; the last matches are scheduled for either 3 or 3:30 p.m.
TOP LOCAL PLAYERS:
Lyndsay Cooke, Bakersfield Christian: Dehydration, lost match point cost her section title last year
Shelby Cooke, Bakersfield Christian: Lyndsay’s little sister is nipping at her heels
Estefania Limpias, Liberty: She might be putting her tremendous talent together.
Frances Ellison, Stockdale: No. 1 player on a very deep team
Nancy Ramirez, East: Sophomore has battled injuries all summer and fall
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Liberty's Estefania Limpias teamed with Darcy Smith to win a Central Section doubles title last year, and is aiming toward a section singles title this season.
Tennis, at least this year, has come much easier to Liberty senior Estefania Limpias than picking her favorite Bolivian food.
"Geez, I like everything," she said after keeping her unbeaten singles mark intact earlier this week. "There's so much."
Limpias would know. Her parents and older siblings were all born in Bolivia, home of such fine dishes as la salteña, a baked turnover full of chicken or beef stew, or la llaj'wa, a picante-style sauce you can put on just about anything.
When the Limpias family moved to Bakersfield just before Limpias was born, they brought Bolivia with them.
"We're still pretty much in our culture," Limpias said. "We still cook the same food, my mom speaks Spanish in the house. It's pretty much the same, no matter how things have changed."
One brother, Robert, took something else from Bolivia: The game of tennis he learned in a country that has but one women's player listed in the professional ranks and no men.
Still, Robert loved the game, and in the U.S., there was plenty of opportunity to play. Robert taught the game to Estefania from a young age, and she took to it quickly. She played as a youth and into high school, first at Bakersfield High and then at Liberty when her mom, a Spanish teacher, transferred there. Her mom is now at Garces.
"She's a very fluid player," said Bakersfield Christian coach Frank Thiessen, who watched Limpias as a youth player. "Everything comes very natural to her."
Limpias actually was offered a spot on a Bolivian youth traveling team but decided to stay in Bakersfield to chase high school glory. Last year, as a junior, Limpias won the Central Section doubles championship with Darcy Smith. But she couldn't quite crack the top tier of singles players in the city -- BCHS' Lyndsay Cooke, East's Nancy Ramirez and Stockdale's Frances Ellison, to name three -- mainly because of self-admitted mental breakdowns in key moments.
"Before, I was hitting the ball and not moving well. I just wasn't thinking, just hitting it hard and playing," Limpias said. "I was weak mentally. Now I'm ready to go."
That, so far, has not been the case this year. Limpias went unbeaten in the early-season Clovis Tournament and has defeated Ellison twice. She'll face Cooke and a new challenger, Cooke's younger sister Shelby, plus Ellison again, at this weekend's Lewis Cup. Ramirez, who is recovering from hand surgery over the summer and a broken foot suffered this fall, is back, but East will compete in a lower flight.
The Lewis Cup, which is held Friday and Saturday at five sites around the city -- with the top-flight schools at Stockdale -- is in a round-robin format that puts most of the emphasis on team strength.
To that end, Stockdale, Liberty and Bakersfield Christian are expected to finish at or near the top. They all play one another Friday.
And don't count out the Eagles (14-0-1) against the two Division I schools.
"We can hold our own with anyone in the Valley," Thiessen said.
The Cooke sisters, along with Visalia-Redwood's Gabrielle Gatewood, who beat Lyndsay Cooke in the section championship last year, are the cream of the Valley crop, Thiessen said.
But Limpias is looking to break into that group. And, last year, one of one of yearly flights to Bolivia, she had plenty of time to think about how she could get there.
"I've been practicing really hard, working really hard," Limpias said. "I really want the Valley singles championship. That's what I'm going for."
