It was a superb season for the Sobrato boys tennis team with a 9-5 league record and a third-place finish in the eight-team Blossom Valley Athletic League, Santa Teresa Division. Westmont finished first, with Silver Creek in second. The Bulldogs were next, with Santa Teresa, Christopher, Lincoln, Yerba Buena and Pioneer further back.
Co-captain Aarnav Admala led the way for Sobrato, and he capped the season with a stellar performance in the league championships during the week of April 20. In that competition, Admala captured his second straight division singles title, knocking off favorites from the top two league teams.
The Bulldogs excelled in BVAL Santa Teresa team play with a deep and young crew. The usual lineup had Admala, a junior, at the top of the singles ladder, followed by sophomores Marcus Tan and Ryan Pham and then co-captain junior Krish Saraf.
On the doubles side, Sobrato featured sophomore Ting-An “Enzo” Hsu and freshman Sidharth Sreejith as the first pair, sophomores Vasko Rajkovic and Jensen Wilson at second and Majd “Jude” Ghanem, the lone senior, paired with sophomore Albert Clemente as the third duo. Also on the Bulldogs squad was Syed Hasan.
Coach Foday Mattia’s tutelage was key to the team’s success. He brought the team along, mixing players from different school grades and adding new players to experienced ones. He explained his teaching philosophy.
“Contrary to prevailing notions, practice does not make perfect,” Mattia said. “It is only perfect practice that makes perfect. A tennis player or tennis student who does not practice with the perfect stroke—this applies to the perfect practice of the right shot selections and having an adjustable game plan—their production techniques will never improve or be perfect.”
In team tennis competition, a single point is scored for a team with a win in each of the four singles slots and in each of the three doubles slots. Thus, to get a majority of the seven available points to beat an opponent, all matches count equally and the team’s top-to-bottom depth is crucial to success.
This was illustrated on the singles side. Supporting Admala’s impressive 10-3 record, Pham, Tan and Saraf racked up a combined 22 victories in league competitions.
Over in the doubles, An-Hsu and Sreejith excelled in third-set tiebreakers and shined when filling in at singles, taking four out of five matches there. Rajkovic, with a power serve, and Wilson, with winners at the net, came through victorious in five of eight matches.
Ghanem was also on the plus side of .500 in his competitions.
Clemente and Hasan were newcomers to the sport and their contributions in doubles were extremely valuable, as they helped Sobrato with five wins on the season.
“As a certified coach and a veteran player of more than 40 years, I play and teach textbook tennis,” coach Mattia said. “With perfect practice, our incomplete team (having lost most of our team members because they graduated) brought three new players who had no match or competition experience.
“Within one week, they transformed into competitive players that won several matches during the BVAL interscholastic tennis season that contributed to our successful third place—defeating five other teams.”
Sobrato began the league season on Feb. 24 with a 7-0 rout of Yerba Buena. They lost to the veteran group at Silver Creek two days later, and then ran off four wins in a row. SHS edged Santa Teresa 4-3, drilled Pioneer 7-0, beat Christopher 5-2 and topped Lincoln 4-3.
The Bulldogs fell to powerful Westmont, rebounded to beat Yerba Buena 5-2, lost 6-1 to Silver Creek and then lost the rematch to Santa Teresa.
Sobrato closed strongly to nail in a third-place finish. They beat Pioneer and fought off Christopher 4-3 and Lincoln 4-3 before losing to the unbeaten champion Westmont Warriors.
“Our three newly-minted, match-ready players combined forces with our solid and existing players to form a formidable team,” coach Mattia said. “With perfect practice sessions under the tutelage of Associate Coach Kim Panos and me, our team at Sobrato High School was able to live up to its expectations.”
Mattia and Panos also coached the team members to be mentally strong. Clutch play resulted in victories by the narrow 4-3 margin in five league matches. That was the ticket to the third-place finish in the BVAL Santa Teresa.
“The boys pulled out the wins when we really needed them, keeping us competitive to the very end,” coach Panos said.
After dual match play concluded, the league conducted post-season action. In the tournament, Admala knocked off the top two seeds in his sparkling run to a second straight singles title.
He defeated Christopher’s Cito Bira by forfeit, then won two big straight set victories for the crown. In the semifinals, the third-seeded Admala smashed second-seeded Lucas Wong of Silver Creek 6-0, 6-1 and then in the final, he defeated top-seeded Andrew Moore of Westmont 6-4, 7-5.
Later, Admala competed in the multi-division BVAL championships and reached the final. A loss there narrowly kept him from a bid to the Central Coast Section playoffs.
Tan and Pham shifted to doubles to compete in the post-season, as did Rajkovic and Wilson. Neither doubles pair reached the final, where a CCS slot was available.
The 9-5 third-place result came from a squad dominated by underclassmen. With all but one member returning next year, the future is bright.
“We look forward to what the team will accomplish next season,” coach Mattia said.
