By Larry Ma
For the first time since 2010, the Galileo Boys tennis team placed 3rd, securing a place in the playoffs with 3 wins and 5 losses. Prior to this season starting, the team was thinking that they’d probably win one game and two if we’re lucky. The successful season was pretty unexpecting. Last season, the team only had three players and the team didn’t garner any wins.
During the season, one of the keys to the team’s success is that the Galileo tennis team got a combination of experienced players and new players that were determined to put in the hard work. Some key experienced players in the team include Kay Pham(#1), Kenny Tang(#2), and Kai Lee(#3), who all played singles.
Another success for the team is because of things that happened to other schools. Wallenberg had some problems with recruiting players and having coaches for their team so they had to drop out of the season. Then, Balboa’s tennis coach quit at the last minute before the 1st Galileo vs. Balboa match. With these two coincidences, it led to the Lions winning against Balboa twice and not having to worry about competition with Wallenberg, which helped them secure at least 4th place, which is a spot for the playoffs.
In the playoffs, Galileo matched up against the 2 seed Lowell Cardinals on May 10th. During the match, Galileo had to forfeit their singles match due to the lack of a player to fill that role, while Lowell had to forfeit one of their doubles matches for the same reason. Before the match even started, each team had already earned a point with the winning team needing to win at least 3 matches in order to win the game.
Unfortunately, the Galileo singles players were defeated with Kay P. losing (6-7,1-6), Kenny T. (1-6, 3-6, 1-6), and then Kai L. (4-6, 1-6). The Galileo doubles players didn’t fare much better, as Shun L. and Isrrael M. losing (0-6, 0-6) and then Rich W. and Zack C. losing (1-6, 0-6). Despite their best efforts the Galileo Lions lost to Lowell (6-1) putting an end to the Lion’s season.
When asked how the season went, Coach Roth answered with, “This season has been an excellent rebuilding year with 90% of the athletes being freshmen or sophomores while finishing in 3rd place in CIF-SF. If we continue to develop our tennis players and recruit experienced players, then we can continue to progress very well.”
