Team of Morgan Hill and Gilroy players heading to Sectionals
ELK GROVE — As captain of her ladies senior team at the Morgan Hill Tennis Club, Lynda Hansen’s job was to pick the best mix of doubles teams before the season started in October.
Hansen went with her instinct not knowing what to expect. Since then, she said, her team has “just been winning, and winning, and winning.”
The group captured the Lower Peninsula title March 14, completing an 8-4 league record in the process, and last weekend became the first team in their tennis club’s three-year history to win a district championship. The ladies will play at Sectionals May 7-9 in Walnut Creek as one of four teams still standing in Northern California.
It is a lot to take in, especially for them.
“It’s been fun. Oh my gosh, it’s been fun, overwhelmingly fun,” Hansen said Tuesday. “We had to beat one of the best teams around to make districts. From there, we went up against some of the best players in Northern California. It didn’t cross my mind we were going to take first, and then there we were.”
The team comprises 15 players, though, nine made the trip to Elk Grove last weekend for Districts. The pairs included Carol Ferri and Cindy Johnson of Gilroy, Linda Schmidlin of Morgan Hill and Gilroy’s Lucy Olivares and Maureen Webb and Barbara Fels of Morgan Hill. Hansen and Wendy Spohr rotated playing with Gilroy’s Cathy Spaulding.
They work well together, channeling a teamwide bond that Webb said is centered on good sportsmanship.
“It’s such a close-knit group, very confident and competitive,” she said.
“Lynda did a great job putting us together. Barbara and I really click; we can kind of anticipate each other’s moves. All of our teams are like that.”
Morgan Hill Tennis Club founder and former president Pravin Lathigara saw potential in the group early on.
“The most important thing is chemistry and the camaraderie of the players,” said Lathigara, a tennis player of more than 30 years. “They are very enthusiastic and motivated.”
The ladies met their potential early on, clinching the top seed in the Lower Peninsula playoffs. They defeated a solid team from Cupertino in the final to punch their tickets to Districts.
At Elk Grove’s Laguna Creek Racquet Club, the ladies swept their opener against a club from Mill Valley, then beat the top teams from Sunnyvale and Reno.
“There were teams from all over at the tournament,” Webb said. “Going into the final, one of the other team captains said she hoped we’d win ‘because you have the nicest people of any team here.'”
The local nine did and will now see where they stack up in the state on Mother’s Day weekend. The top teams in Sectionals will advance to the national tournament held in Palm Springs.
The Morgan Hill and Gilroy team will try to qualify short-handed; Fels will be on vacation for the last two days of Sectionals.
“I really wish she’d cancel that,” Hansen joked. “It’s going to take a lot for us to advance, but we’re going to approach it like we have every other tournament, not really expecting anything.”
That has worked well thus far.
