The boys tennis team enters their 2017 season after appearing in last year’s Central Coast Section playoffs.
Their goals for this season are just as ambitious. ¨I’m hoping that we can do similar to last year,” says Coach Dave Owdom.
However, there will be significant obstacles if they hope to be as successful as last year. “Menlo-Atherton is the biggest challenge in our league,” continues Owdom. “They are really tough because they have a lot of highly ranked players on their team … It would be nice to pull an upset on Menlo-Atherton.”
The team is led by senior captain Kelvin Yang — one of only two seniors on the team, meaning that the core of this year’s squad will stay the same for the next two years.
“I honestly have expected us to be worse, but we have plenty of good underclassmen,” says Yang. “I’m happy that we have a lot of skilled underclassmen.”
In addition, much of last year’s team returned and are eager to help the Dons replicate the prior season’s success.
Owdom explains, “we’ve got two new players that are very good in [freshman] Daniel Duan and [sophomore] Rithik Booreddy who … I hope will help replace the seniors [we lost last year].”
With the season underway, the Dons look to compete again for the Peninsula Athletic League title and enter CCS again, which would mark their sixth straight year in the competition.
After suffering a heartbreaking 4-3 loss to Carlmont before bouncing back with a 4-3 win over Woodside on Mar. 1, the Dons rode their momentum to a 7-0 win over Mills on Mar. 2.
Most of Aragon’s varsity players won their games by a big margin with No. 1 doubles sophomores Richard Tang and Rithik Booreddy and No. 2 doubles juniors Jason Zhao and Patrick Tse both only dropping one game in their respective matches.
“We were able to stay focused in the heat of the game,” says Zhao. “We kept errors to a minimum, even though it may be easy to make mistakes.”
Meanwhile, the Dons’ singles lineup of No. 2 Freshman Daniel Duan and No. 4 senior Kelvin Yang both easily won their ties, No.1 sophomore Daniel Li and No. 3 Jordan Chall both overcame difficulties in their matchups, but managed to both eke out an identical 7-5, 6-4 win.
The Dons will take on Burlingame on Mar. 9.
The tennis team also played Hillsdale on Mar. 7, but the game occurred after the Outlook’s print deadline.
