Garces no match for El Diamante
| Wednesday, May 27 2009 10:54 PM
Last Updated Wednesday, May 27 2009 10:54 PM
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Casey Christie / The Californian Garces tennis player, Ricky Phillips returns the ball to El Diamante's Ryan Andrada, during the Division II Central Section team tennis championships, Wednesday in Visalia.
Casey Christie / The Californian Garces' tennis player, Nick Jacobs returns the ball to his opponent, Josh Lorentzen from El Diamante High School in Visalia Wednesday afternoon in Visalia during the Division II Central Section team tennis championships.
VISALIA Garces senior Ricky Phillips knew that his team was facing an uphill battle against top-seeded Visalia-El Diamante in Wednesday's Division II section final.
He just didn't anticipate exactly how tough the battle would be.
El Diamante (24-2) led by Josh Lorentzen and Ryan Andrada beat the Rams 8-1 for its fourth section title in five years.
"We came in knowing that we were the underdogs," Phillips said. "But we didn't expect it to be like this. We expected it to be closer."
The Miners won all six singles matches to clinch the championship before doubles action even began.
Kyle Knutson and Daniel Sanchez helped the Rams avert a shutout by downing Paul Han and Samuel Jung 6-3, 6-2 in the final match of the day.
"We just got beat by a better team," Garces coach Barb Johnston said. "They are probably the best team in the valley. My kids played well. I'm proud of the way they played and of the way they competed."
Lorentzen, who finished second to Stockdale's Jeremy Quiroz for the section individual singles title earlier in the month, fought off an early challenge from Nick Jacobs before rolling to a 6-3, 6-0 singles victory.
"It was kind of frustrating getting blown out," Jacobs said. "He was a good player. I just tried make the match last as long as possible by returning as many balls as I could to wear him out."
Andrada, the sections third place singles player, followed suit by knocking off Phillips 6-3, 6-0.
No. 3 Garces (20-9-2) was much more competitive at the bottom end of the singles ladder. Daniel Yi narrowly lost to Eric MacDonald 6-1, 3-6, (10-6) while Daniel Taylor led 5-2 in the first set before being beaten 7-5, 6-1 by Peter Kim.
"We lost a tie break at number five and our number six guy was up by two," Johnston said. "So at that point I was thinking if we could go 4-2 or 3-3 we might have a shot because I knew our number three doubles team was going to be hard to beat."
Despite the loss the Rams were table take solace in the fact that they were the only team to win a single match against Miners during the entire playoffs.
"Garces is the toughest team we've played all year," El Diamante coach Joe Harding said. "The score was 8-1 but some of the singles matches could have gone either way. Obviously it helps having the number two and number three players in the valley in singles. But depth is what wins championships. "
"It feels nice to see the guys work so hard and have it pay off," he continued.
Jacobs said finishing second isn't all that bad either.
"We had a pretty good season," Jacobs said. "Just to get the valley championship is an accomplishment itself. We'd like to have done a little better today but it is what it is. We're just happy to get this far."
