Boys’ tennis team ends season with third place league ranking
Members of the tennis team stand proud with awards after their league finish.
May 16, 2014
The Tracy High boys’ tennis team finished the season with a 6-4 league record and a third place ranking; these stats did not meet the expectations of head coach Patrick O’Brien.
“I don’t think any of our team was satisfied with third place,” O’Brien said. “While I think we would all agree that Lincoln was the standout team in the league, I think that we all felt we could compete with Lodi and would have liked to take second in league rather than third.”
Junior Rushi Arumalla had other thoughts.
“We had a few injured players, including our top guy,” Arumalla said. “I think we all put in good effort at the league tournament, and we should be proud of it.”
One big contributor to the team was sophomore Josh Boehm.
“Boehm moved up quite a bit from last year,” O’Brien said.
Boehm played in the number three and number two singles spots this season, which O’Brien said is “a big jump from last year.”
Boehm agreed with Arumalla on the satisfaction of placing third in league, but said he would have liked to see the team higher in the rankings.
“My goal this season was to improve my game and give all the effort I could,” Boehm said.
Boehm said training in off-season and private lessons is what helped him step up so much this season.
“I played first doubles for the majority of last season, so moving up to the second singles position for a good part of the season was a big challenge for me,” Boehm said.
O’Brien stated that Boehm fulfilled his temporary role well, since team captain and number one player Derek Paris was injured for much of the season.
After playing three singles matches, Boehm said it was the best spot he could have been in.
“I felt like I excelled by playing upperclassmen and extremely experienced tennis players,” Boehm said.
O’Brien said there were several players that improved much from last year, which was great to contribute to the team this year, including sophomores Matthew Nguyen, Eric Louwerens, Hamza Raniwala, and junior Michael Yamada. O’Brien added that Amal Thommil was also a nice new addition to the team.
Even though the team will be losing seniors Derek Paris and Andrew Canlas, both finished off their last season in success being the runner-ups in the league doubles tournament moving on to the sections doubles tournament.
Both Paris and Canlas were team captains.
Now that the tennis team’s season is over, O’Brien said that he thinks the team met its goals overall, and all of the players had fun, and improved their tennis skills.
“As a team the biggest accomplishment was making it to the team sections match,” O’Brien said. “While we lost in the first round 4-5, we played a good match and were in a position to win.”
Going into next year, O’Brien hopes that the boys play more during their off-season to improve as individuals. As a team, O’Brien stated that the players need to play together more often and work on developing their skills.
Next year’s league is going to be realigned and also much stronger competitors.
“We’ll have to practice harder and become better to compete for a league championship next year,” O’Brien said. “I think our boys will be up to the challenge.”
