Cate girls tennis clinched a spot in the CIF Division 3 Finals with a nail-biting 10-8 victory over Cerritos on Wednesday.
The Rams, now 16-0 on the season, will take on Culver City in the championship matchup on Friday at 11 a.m. at the Claremont Club.
This is such an incredibly hard-fought result,” Cate coach Trevor Thorpe said. “Cerritos was a very strong team. They’ve got two college-level singles players, an absolute wall #3 singles player, a very solid #1 and competent doubles farther down the line.
“That’s usually a winning combination, but 16 times this season we’ve had the answer to whatever our opponents throw at us.”
The first two rounds were very tight, with the match knotted up at 6-6 thanks to solid play from Cerritos’ top two singles players and Cate’s performance at the top two doubles spots.
Cerritos came out with a pair of 6-0 wins in singles play to put some pressure on the Rams.
Cate then got some clutch play from the doubles courts as the pairings of Sophie Alijani/Elsie Chamberlain and Colette Chang/Reyna Takahashi came away with wins to knot things up at 8-8.
The Rams duo of Frances Davis and Lisa Hasebe then pulled out a huge victory in their matchup to give Cate its seventh doubles win of the day and the 9-8 lead.
“Lisa and Frances have only played together 3 times this season, but it’s clear they’re a dynamic pairing,” Thorpe said. “They executed what we call “Cate Doubles” with a complete absence of fear, despite the high stakes.
Claire Bianchi was then the final Ram remaining, battling in singles action. Bianchi was down 3-1 overall and behind 40-0 in the fifth game of the matchup, but she never backed down.
From there, Bianchi took over and rode the momentum all the way to a comeback 6-3 victory to give her team the fourth CIF Final appearance in program history.
“The bottom line is that every Cate player put it all on the line today, from the first point to the last, to get that collective victory and a shot at our first CIF Championship,” Thorpe said. “I couldn’t be more proud of the effort and the result is a bonus.”
