Girls’ tennis fights through the rain, loses to Beverly Hills

Olivia LeganStaff WriterThe Vikings seemed to be on a roll. After dominating Inglewood, Culver City and Morningside, girls’ tennis faced their biggest rival, Beverly Hills, and lost.The Vikings started picking up speed at the beginning of the season, but still played close games and won just slightly. Something clicked with the girls because in their Sep. 30 game against Inglewood the team was victorious, winning 18-0.They continued to rock the courts but stormy weather got in the way during their match against Culver City on Oct. 5. They started out strong against Culver City, but soon the cloudy skies began to pour. The players kept saying they could play but the game was still postponed. Two days later the Vikings shut out Morningside, dominating with a score of 18-0, their second shut-out of the season.After trampling the other teams in past games, Samo’s girls’ tennis was in the perfect position to slam their biggest rival, Beverly Hills. Unfortunately, Beverly Hills was triumphant, beating the Vikings 14-4 on Oct. 12.“Beverly Hills has always been a tough competitor and major rival for us. It wasn’t until last year that we were able to break their winning streak. Everyone on the Samo team this year has a lot of heart and cares so much about the game, but when it comes down to it, Beverly has some skilled tournament players who have been playing for a very long time,” senior and co-captian Kayla Shapirio said. “We are a good team, and so are they. The outcome is not what we wanted, but hopefully we’ll be able to pull it together for the next match.” Beverly Hills was eliminated in the 16th round of CIF last year but that was a rare occasion for the team. In the past nine years, Beverly Hills has been to CIF six times and won three titles.“It was going to be a hard game no matter what. There were a lot of close matches; [Beverly Hills] rose to the occasion. We were lacking some experience from losing five starters this season,” coach Wilston Poon said.This loss will hopefully only be a minor setback in the Vikings’ season so they can get back to where they were before the Beverly Hills game, shutting out their competitors and training to dominate their biggest rival in their next face-off with home team advantage.“I think we went in very confident because of our previous wins, maybe a little overconfident,” senior and co-captain Lucy Walsh said. “I think it was that we weren’t thinking about tennis, we were thinking about winning. We need to think more about the fundamentals of the game in order to succeed.”olegan@thesamohi.com