East freshman rolls through field for SEYL singles title; Garces seniors claim doubles
| Friday, May 08 2009 11:14 PM
Last Updated Monday, May 11 2009 11:25 AM
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Felix Adamo/ The Californian East's Daymon Johnson follows his return to David Mossman at the SEYL tennis finals.
Felix Adamo/ The Californian David Mossman of BHS returns to Daymon Johnson of East at the SEYL tennis finals.
Look out, Central Section tennis favorites Jeremy Quiroz, Alex Nichols and Josh Lorentzen.
East High freshman D.J. Johnson is in the field too, and he doesn't plan on holding anything back.
Johnson rolled past Bakersfield High's David Mossman 6-1, 6-3 in the SEYL singles championship Friday at Bakersfield Racquet Club and into the section tournament starting next weekend.
"It doesn't really matter to me that I'm not the most known player," Johnson said. "I'm just going to come out and take care of business and play the way I play."
Johnson dominated almost from the get-go, leading 6-1, 4-0 before Mossman made a final stand. At the end, after one more winner, he dropped his racket and did a double fist-pump -- the league championship as a freshman is rare, and Johnson did after being home-schooled until this year.
"There was a lot of pressure; I was a lot more nervous than usual," Johnson said. "Then as the match went on, I got more comfortable, got more excited, got into a rythym. That's when I found my game."
Johnson hasn't played either Quiroz, the defending section champion from Stockdale, or Nichols, the 2007 champ from Bakersfield Christian, this year in high school competition. But he said he plays practice matches against them from time to time.
"Against Jeremy, I've never really given him too much trouble, but it's been a long time since I've had a chance," Johnson said. "With Alex, we've had some close matches lately, but he's been getting the better of me. But everything now is icing on the cake."
In the SEYL doubles draw, Nick Jacobs and Ricky Phillips of Garces routed Bakersfield's Brandon Alba and Jack Foster 6-2, 6-0 for the championship.
Jacobs and Phillips, seniors who have been neighbors since age 3, decided after Jacobs lost in the section singles and Phillips in the section doubles tourney last year.
"We figured we can get a lot farther in doubles than if we tried to play singles," Jacobs said.
So far, so good. After Alba and Foster broke serve early in the match for a 2-1 lead, the Rams cruised to 11 straight games, hitting plenty of winners and capitalizing on some sloppy BHS serving.
"We made our shots," Phillips said. "We were a little more consistent than they were."
Liberty claimed both third-place titles, with Jacob Lousche beating East's Adrian Magallanes 6-2, 6-4 for third place in singles and Michael Rice-Colin Olsen outlasting Garces' Brian McDermott-Sean Halpin 6-3, 1-6, 6-4 for third in doubles. All of those teams qualify for the section individual tournaments, which are in Clovis.
