Boys’ Tennis Determined to Place First in the Almont League

TINA CHEN
Staff Writer

Like every sports team on campus, one of Alhambra’s main goals is to beat their rival school Mark Keppel Aztecs. Last year, the varsity boys’ tennis team had a close match with the Aztecs, resulting in defeat with a score of 8-10. However, this previous downfall motivated the players to be more prepared this year. On March 20, the Moors fought a close match against the Aztecs, winning their first league game with a score of 81-79.
“Every year, Keppel has close games with us. We were behind them after the first round, but our team pulled together and won in the end,” Captain Brendan Ma said.
The boys prepared themselves during preseason by having practice matches against each other so that they could test their individual skills. In doing so, they were able to see who had the best singles or doubles combination and finalized their lineups. During season, they had daily practices to help perfect the players’ strong points and improve on their weaknesses.
“We prepare for upcoming games doing drills for anything we need to work on. Learning from the mistakes made in previous games is a big deal to us,” singles player John Chen said.
Though losing many senior members decreased the team’s overall strength, the Moors do not believe that this will prevent them from winning Almont League.
“As long as we try our best, nothing will restrict us from getting that title, because the whole team has been training really hard,” doubles player Steven Ha said.
On April 17, the Moors won the match against San Gabriel with a score of 12-6. With a current league record of 4-1, Alhambra currently places first for Almont League. The varsity boys’ tennis will be playing the Montebello Oilers in their next game.