Delaney Whittet
Sports Editor
Zeros filled Inglewood High School’s side of the scorecard, but that didn’t stop Mira Costa tennis coach Joe Ciasulli from cheering on the Sentinels.
Costa’s boys varsity tennis team gave its junior varsity team a turn, allowing it to compete on Tuesday in a home game against Inglewood’s varsity team. The Mustangs came away with a simple 18-0 win.
“We played a solid game,” sophomore Ben Choromanski said. “Playing Inglewood forces us to play with more consistantsy because we have to keep the ball in bounds,”
Instead of solely trying to win the game, Costa’s JV team focused on returning the ball to locations that were in Inglewood’s players’ reach, in order to help them improve and enjoy the sport of tennis, Ciasulli said.
“We were still trying to win, but we wanted to be ambassadors of tennis and keep the game fun,” Ciasulli said. “My players were specifically instructed not to be condescending, but to help them [the Sentinels] love the game by playing manageable balls.”
At Inglewood High School, playing a sport does not count as a class, and students do not receive physical education credit. Most of Inglewood’s tennis players are kids that are in Inglewood tennis coach Luke Arong’s physics class and began playing tennis a few months ago when Arong encouraged them to join.
“If playing a sport was part of their PE credit, I think a lot of the kids would start playing earlier, but what they all have right now is pure dedication,” Arong said.
Costa’s boys varsity tennis team is currently 10-2-0 overall and 3-0 in Bay League. On March 2, Costa got one of its biggest wins of this season when it took down Los Alamitos High School, the defending California Interscholastic Federation Southern Section champions, and won the match, 10-8.
“Our team as a whole is stronger than ever,” sophomore Evan Fortier said.
Costa played Morningside High School yesterday, but the results were not yet available at the time of publication.
“I think that we will do very well in our upcoming games in Bay League and, hopefully, go far in our CIF matches too,” Choromaski said.
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