Cameron Richter
Staff Writer
This season, the Mira Costa Boys Tennis team is looking to improve from their exit in the second round of California Interscholastic Competition in their 2014 season. They are also looking to repeat their first place finish in Bay League Doubles.
Even after graduating three seniors, the Mustangs are confident that they can build upon their previous successes with singles players Alex Gaal and Jeremy Chung, as well as doubles players Blake and Tanner Suard.
“Even though we lost some players I still feel like we can go really far in CIF.” Gaal said. “We still have a lot of very good guys and I think we’re going to do very well.”
In the first round of CIF playoffs last year, Costa defeated Northwood and moved on to the second round of competition. Unfortunately, they were defeated by Corona Del Mar.
“It was sad to lose in CIF last year,” Chung said. “But it was definitely a good learning experience and hopefully we can go further this year.”
Doubles partners, Alex Gaal and Alex Han, were especially successful last year for the Mustangs. The duo won doubles in the Bay League for Mira Costa.
Gaal and Han moved in to the regional championships, which is a tournament of 64 of the best doubles teams in the state. They were defeated in the sweet 16. Since then, Han has graduated, and Gaal has switched to singles where he hopes to have some of the same success.
“Alex and I played really well together,” Gaal said. “But it’s good that I moved to singles this year because it can help the team out a lot.”
Costa is going into this season with Alex Gaal as the number one singles player. Behind him is Jeremy Chung and after him the team is still looking for stability from a number three player.
In doubles, the number one duo is twins Blake and Tanner Suard. After them, Jason Wu and Bobby Sillman play as the number twos. After them, the Mustangs are still looking for the best duo with Adam Kaseff and Mateo Carella starting recently.
“Blake and I have a really good chemistry playing together,” Tanner Suard said. “This is really important in doubles and it should help Costa win a lot of games this year.”
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