To paraphrase a longtime professional tennis sponsor, Santa Maria’s boys’ tennis team has come a long way, baby.
After a recent win, the Saints stood at 5-2 and a perfect 4-0 in league play, going into a March 30 match against undefeated perennial powerhouse Santa Ynez Valley. Among their victories, the Saints have beaten St. Joseph, Lompoc, and Templeton High—not a bad start for a team that had just three wins to show for all of last year.
“It feels really great,” said head coach Rod Garcia. “I personally am not a very competitive person. I enjoy just being out there, regardless of the results. But my guys are finally getting some rewards for their efforts, and that’s really cool.”
It’s safe to say the top of the league standings is uncharted territory for Garcia and company. The Saints have suffered through a spate of winless seasons in the recent past, often recording lopsided losses against much more experienced opponents. Most of the Saints’ individual victories in previous years came by way of the school’s foreign exchange students. The team doesn’t have any foreign players this year, but it hasn’t seemed to matter, much to the coach’s surprise.
“Our goal was to finish fourth,” Garcia said of his preseason expectations. “We thought we could be competitive. We thought there were at least two, possibly three teams we could beat, so it’s been a bit of a shock.”
Garcia, who also coaches junior varsity soccer at Santa Maria High School and women’s soccer at Allan Hancock College, said the difference this year comes down to one word: experience. The Saints boast two strong-armed seniors in their third year on the team, and they’ve been near perfect on the singles side, where they’ve developed a knack for sweeping opponents.
Of the trio of singles players, the star is senior Kji Hamill, who played for St. Joseph for two years before transferring to Santa Maria. He’s sporting an individual record of 20-1 going into his match against Santa Ynez.
At the No. 2 singles slot is senior Elias Murillo, who was 18-3 overall and unbeaten in league matches as of March 29. Murillo said the team’s newfound respectability is proof positive that all their summer practice has paid off.
“Nobody really expects Santa Maria to win anything at all because we have a bad reputation in sports, except for soccer,” he said. “Everybody is trying, and they know that the other competition is down, so it’s the year to make it through.”
No. 3 singles player Alfredo Rodriguez is 10-2 in league matches this year, prior to the Santa Ynez match. He and Murillo attended a tennis camp at UCLA over the summer and have seen the benefit to their ground strokes and on-the-court concentration.
“We’ve improved in many ways, such as our serve, forehand, and backhand,” Rodriguez said. “The whole team has gotten the effort out of each other. Even the doubles team, they’ve done their part and we’ve done our part. It’s a good thing to surpass the wins from last year, and we’re looking forward to more.”
With the singles players taking care of business, the Saints have often only needed doubles squads to win once to serve up the team victories.
Doubles players Josue Cardoza and Johnny Lazaro put in some extra effort in the off-season, unheard of for the team, according to their coach.
Lazaro, a sophomore in his third year playing the sport, said he and his doubles partner, Steve Rodriguez, are learning how to communicate better on the court, an essential ingredient for any good doubles team.
“My freshman year, we had a lot of beginners, including myself and my partner,” he said. “We just practiced on our own and my friends, the same with them. That’s why we’re so good this year. We’re all very excited.”
Students have been slow to embrace tennis at Santa Maria High. When he was first assigned the job of head coach, Garcia said it took weeks for him to get even five players interested in joining the team. Most had never picked up a racket before and hadn’t even heard of the sport’s top international stars. Now, there’s an overabundance of players—11 on varsity and 16 on junior varsity—and enthusiasm for the sport’s nuances is growing.
Many players joined Garcia’s team after seeing the similarity of tennis to handball, a popular intramural sport at the school. Before long, interest piqued and Garcia moved on to teaching his squad the sheer enjoyment of the game.
“We have a very casual environment with the tennis team,” Garcia said. “We do have a lot of fun out there. They get to like the sport, and therefore they come back.
“I used to be able to beat all of them,” he added. “Now I can hardly beat any of them.”
The high school lacks its own on-campus tennis courts, so the team practices and plays home matches at Minami Community Center. There, they’ve worked out with ex-Hancock players who have helped the squad improve their strokes and focus during matches.
“There’s a community of tennis appreciation that’s being developed out there,” Garcia said. “These guys are helping enrich the program, and they’re good players, so they’re helping our guys get better. It makes my job really easy.”
Momentum is building for the sport among team members and the school as a whole, evident in the growing attendance at home matches. Garcia said he could recall many events where he was the team’s only fan. Now, as the wins keep coming, kids and their parents are beginning to take notice.
For Garcia, the most rewarding part of tasting victory is watching opposing coaches, who used to regard their matches with Santa Maria as a cakewalk, now taking the Saints seriously.
“It’s nice to see them suffer a little bit,” he said in jest. “We’re having a great time.”
Staff Writer Jeremy Thomas shares a barber with Andre Agassi. Contact him (Jeremy, not Andre) at jthomas@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Apr 1-8, 2010.