With the final set of the third round still in progress Wednesday afternoon at Los Alamitos High, Griffins girls tennis coach Kevin Garrett positioned himself away from the crowd, noticeably fixated on his clipboard.
In a match that potentially could’ve ended in a tie, Garrett was tallying games, trying to predict how a tiebreaker would pan out. As it turned out, his hasty math skills would not be put to the test.
Los Alamitos’ Aliya Alenikov and Hope Hairrell capped a stellar afternoon with a match-clinching doubles win over Corona del Mar’s Riley Gerdau and Siena Sharf, allowing the third-ranked Griffins to edge the second-ranked Sea Kings, 10-8, in a nonleague showdown between top-10 foes.
“This is the biggest win this program has ever had,” Garrett said after the match. “We’ve never beaten a No. 1- or No. 2-ranked team in Orange County until today.”
Alenikov and Hairrell, playing in the No. 3 doubles slot, finished 3-0 on the afternoon. With the Griffins leading, 9-8, late in the third round, the tandem’s 7-6 (7-3) win over Gerdau and Sharf – CdM’s No. 1 duo – gave Los Alamitos the decisive 10th point of the match.
“That last doubles set couldn’t have set up any better,” Garrett added. “I knew even if the match ended 9-9, we would’ve won on games. But I didn’t want them to know that. I didn’t want to take the pressure off of them.”
Los Alamitos (3-2) jumped to a 4-2 lead in the first round, after going 2-1 in both singles and doubles play.
Corona del Mar (8-3) evened the score, 6-6, in the second round, matching what its counterparts did in the first, setting the stage for a compelling final round.
“They had more depth than we thought,” Sea Kings coach Brian Ricker explained. “Across the board, that was the best doubles team we’ve played this season.”
The Griffins took five points from Corona del Mar’s talented doubles lineup, and added five points from singles.
Los Al’s Jennifer Lu went 3-0 on the single side.
In other nonleague action:
No. 1 University 13, No. 4 Dana Hills 5: The Trojans went 9-0 in singles play and added four points from their doubles teams.
Contact the writer: kconnolly@ocregister.com
