By Katie von Behren
Staff Writer
“It was a good win for us today,” coach Joe Ciasulli said. “It was so nice to come and win on their court after losing last year. I am glad that the girls did well, and I can’t wait to see what this season holds.”
After the first round of matches, Costa had a 5-1 lead over Santa Monica. Junior Paula Cenusa won her two matches and sophomores Brooke Swallow and Mai Nojima won all of their individual three sets as well.
“It was amazing to defeat a team we lost to last year, because it shows that we have improved as a team,” Nojima said. “We had great chemistry in the doubles partners today, which gave us a boost.”
Senior Sulibeth Ortiz-Torres played in her first match of the season today with her doubles partner, junior Sidney Ascher. Ortiz-Torres had previously been waiting to be cleared to play. Despite this being their first match together, Ortiz-Torres and Ascher started off strong and ended up winning all three of their matches.
Doubles partners junior Claudia Fellows and senior Kayla Tarlton subbed in for seniors Juliana Hoft and Alex Waller in the second round and continued on to play in the third match as well. They lost the first match 6-1 but came back to beat Santa Monica 6-4 in the third match. Seniors Carly McGuire and Hanna McGuire won both of their doubles matches 6-0.
“We all had a great day, and we all really proved ourselves,” Carly McGuire said.
Seniors Susanna Sieke and Lauren Watts, who subbed in for the third match, also contributed to the Mustangs’ win by beating Santa Monica 7-5.
“Everyone played really well today,” Waller said. “We worked harder to win than Santa Monica, and I’m proud of how we played overall.”
The girls had a match yesterday at Palos Verdes High School, but the scores were unavailable due to time of publication. The girls will be playing at home today against Brentwood at 3 p.m. They lost to both Palos Verdes and Brentwood last year, but hope to redeem themselves like they did against Santa Monica.
“We are playing some tough teams this week, and we lost to all of them last year,” Nojima said. “We are undefeated, though, so far and are doing really well this season, so we are going to keep playing our hardest, and we are hopefully going to have some great games.”
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