Season over for BVAL tennis teams

Courtesy of ThePress.net
by Michael Dixon

Last weekend’s North Coast Section matches at Oakley’s Diamond Hills Sports Club brought an end to the high school tennis season for most Bay Valley Athletic League athletes. The lone exception were Deer Valley’s tennis players, who qualified for Tuesday’s NCS team tournament.

The 12th-seeded Wolverines fell on Tuesday in the first round of the NCS team tournament, 6-1, to No. 5 seed Redwood of the Marin County Athletic League, ending the team’s season.

Deer Valley senior Abid Ahmad was the only local representative to win a set in last week’s overall NCS tournament, as he defeated Clayton Valley’s Jonathan Kim 6-3 in the first set of their match before dropping the final two sets by the same score. His first-set win marked the first time that a BVAL player had won a set in the NCS tournament.

The team of junior Zahid Ahmad and sophomore Cameron Yee were defeated by the Piedmont team of brothers Jon and USC-bound Matt Wang, who repeated their 2010 title. Ahmad and Yee qualified because a team from Mission San Jose couldn’t make the tournament.

“It’s a pretty advanced field,” said Wolverines head coach Brian Richardson. “Overall, the boys really performed well. They played as hard as they could. We have been building a few years to get to this point. Now we need to keep on working so we can make the next step.”

Heritage sent two senior-laden doubles teams to the NCS meet. Michael De La Madrid and Andrew Mucha were the BVAL’s top doubles team last year. They both played singles this year but reunited in the league tournament and beat previously undefeated teammates Matt De La Madrid and Collin Fridel in the league final.

De La Madrid and Mucha were defeated 6-0, 6-2 by the Miramonte team of Brian Tan and Luke Bohuslav. The Miramonte duo lost to the Wang brothers in the final. De La Madrid and Fridel were defeated 6-0, 6-0 in the opening round by Monte Vista’s Mark Meyer and Anthony Lim.

“They kept positive and didn’t get down. In doubles, you can’t have one guy getting down on the other guy, and that never happened,” said Heritage head coach Mike Carman. “Mike and Andrew were down 6-0, 5-0, but they came back to win two games, and that meant a lot to them.”

Joining the players from Deer Valley and Heritage was Freedom senior Jeff Matteri, who was runner-up to Ahmad in the BVAL tournament. In the NCS tournament, he was defeated by Campolindo’s Nolan Richard 6-1, 6-0. That ended a rollercoaster season for Matteri and one of the best individual careers a Freedom tennis player has ever known.

“He had a chance at redemption,” said head coach Steve Amaro. “He played the best that he could. He did play his best; he just played against a kid who’s been playing for 10 years longer.”