SANTA ANA – The vast majority of tennis players occupying the courts at Santa Ana Valley High appear to be novices on this day.
The Orange League isn’t known for its tennis, and it’s not churning out college-level talent as some of Orange County’s top programs do year in and year out. Most of the girls competing in this past week’s league championships had never played the sport before high school.
So amidst the measured rallies and the occasional volleys, it’s startling to see a ball on a distant court whizz inches over the net at a distinguishable velocity. Then again. And again. And once more after that.
The ball even sounds different coming off of Jacquelyn Acosta’s racket, especially on the southpaw’s serves.
The Savanna senior is a rarity in the Division 5-based league. She has had private lessons before, and she has played competitively on the amateur circuit. Her sets tend to be swift while rallies are typically scarce.
Acosta could be the best tennis player the Orange League has ever seen. Her dominance concluded this past Thursday when she captured her second straight Orange League singles title, adding that achievement to a perfect 120-0 regular-season clip she compiled over her four-year career.
“The consistency, that’s what’s mind-boggling,” Rebels first-year coach Ron Elamparo said. “You can have a bad day. Especially being in high school, anything can bring you out of your game. She’s been consistent for four years in a row, that’s what was amazing to me.”
As impressive as her streak has been, the way Acosta picked up the sport in the first place is equally as random.
When she was seven, Acosta opened a copy of the Anaheim youth catalog and flipped to the page that listed every sport the city had to offer. She went with a tried and proven method of selection: shutting her eyes, running an index finger up and down the page, haphazardly letting fate determine the sport she’d eventually take up.
“I’d never played before,” Acosta said of tennis. “I think my first racket was a Walmart brand.”
By the time she was 10, the store-bought brand wasn’t cutting it. Acosta was beginning to play United State Tennis Association (USTA) tournaments around the state, winning her first tourney by the age of 12.
With that success came a top-50 ranking in the state, a status she maintained until last year when financial difficulties forced Acosta to stop playing on the USTA circuit and focus solely on the high school matches.
That’s when the streak got her undivided attention.
Acosta never dropped a set in a preseason or regular-season league match. Elamparo estimated she’s racked up an insane win-loss record in the neighborhood of 240-0.
There have been setbacks, of course. Acosta lost in the Orange League finals as a freshman and was forced to withdraw from the championship set as a sophomore because of injury. Then just 21/2 weeks ago, before a match against Katella, Savanna’s star was in car accident that saw her car get totaled.
“The seat belts got me pretty bruised up and it was hard to move, so coach said, ‘You cannot play,’” Acosta recalled. “I needed to play because I needed my 30-0 (record). Even injured, I wanted to keep my undefeated streak.”
She did just that, sweeping her three sets against the Knights despite being well under 100 percent.
It’s that drive, however, that has guided Acosta back to what will be her fourth CIF appearance in as many years. While she’s never made it out of the second round of individuals, the goal is to make it to at least round three this season.
“Those girls are monsters,” she said of the Division 1-level competition she’s seen in years past.
Whether or not she gets past the second round of individuals in a few weeks, Acosta has seemingly done enough over her high school career to continue her playing career at the next level.
Westimster College in Utah and Colorado State Universityt-Pueblo are two of the schools she is in talks with, and she is hoping Cal State Fullerton or Long Beach State will also reach out to her before it’s all said and done.
In this circumstance, maybe the blindfold-and-point method worked for the best.
Contact the writer: kconnolly@ocregister.com
