Starting from scratch, in just four short years, Orcutt Academy’s head tennis coach Patrick Ortiz has built his girls’ team into a feared playoff contender.
This year marks his second varsity squad, a group beginning to turn heads and intimidate opponents who once overlooked them—not bad for a young charter school with just about 500 students.
“The program overall is on the right path,” Ortiz said. “It really isn’t about me; it’s about providing a tennis opportunity for high school kids.”
Ortiz spent four years as the varsity boys’ tennis coach at St. Joseph before coming over to start the Orcutt Academy program. He said he would’ve been “thrilled” if his first varsity team finished with an even record last year. Instead, they went 19-3, and not only qualified for the CIF playoffs, but made it to the second round before losing to Cajon High.
The Spartans are at it again this season, off to an 8-1 start following a recent 15-3 drubbing of Mission College Prep. The strength of the squad is their doubles teams, which have dropped just three of 81 sets as of Sept. 26.
Ortiz credits the program’s quick rise to prominence with a weekend men’s league in Old Orcutt, in which the girls compete year-round against boys’ teams.
“For three years, the kids would get trounced. Now they’re starting to hold their own,” Ortiz said. “You see them out there now playing against girls instead of men, and they’re just all over that court.”
The Spartans’ cornerstone is the undefeated partnership of sophomore Zoe Hull and senior Nicky Lay. They’re best friends off the court, and the familiarity has translated to near-perfect play.
“We get out and play all the time,” Hull said. “We get along, we’ve never fought before, ever, and we complement each other.”
Lay, who transferred from St. Joseph High her sophomore year, said she and Hull, knowing they’d be playing together, were able to prepare more during the summer.
“I hope to sweep in all my sets and just play good tennis,” Lay said. “If I could repeat this year every year, I would. I’d do this every year of my life.”
Many girls on the team, Ortiz’s first senior class, have played for their coach since they were young children—including Hull, who’s played for him since she was 7 through Ark Tennis.
“I hope next year I’m going to be in singles, but I’m counting the minutes with my doubles partner this year,” she said. “I’m going to be very sad at the end of the season because it will just be so different.”
Not far behind Lay and Hull, Orcutt Academy’s No. 2 doubles team of senior Alyssa Zepeda and freshman Madison Ortiz has lost only once, to a strong San Luis Obispo High squad.
Zepeda picked up the sport her freshman year and is the last remaining player from the inaugural Orcutt Academy freshman team, which only won one game.
“It’s definitely interesting seeing how much [the program] grew, and I’m really happy with the outcome,” she said. “But there’s always more room for perfection.”
Madison, Patrick’s daughter, has been playing since the age of 5, and said she’s just trying to get her start on the high school level.
“I’m hoping to stay all four years,” she said. “This is a nice group of girls, and I’m just really happy to be here.”
Rounding out the doubles side is junior Kasey Ortiz and her partner senior Ari Mariscal. Mariscal said the key to playing well is not getting stressed out and maintaining communication.
“It’s my last year, and I just want us to do the best we can. So far we have,” she said. “We’ve grown as a team and we like to come out and dominate and compete.”
As good as the Spartans are in doubles, where they regularly take seven of nine sets from their opponents, they have no real standouts on the singles side, the only barrier to being ranked among the area’s elite.
But as the old scheduling philosophy goes: To be the best, you’ve got to play the best. The Spartans play a freelance schedule, which Ortiz prefers, because he’s able to pick tougher opponents and give his girls the experience to gain the upper hand come playoff time.
“This year, we beefed up the schedule,” he explained. “We have more league champions, and we’re constantly looking not only to develop, but to get our school out there playing with the big schools.”
Ortiz said his girls, without hesitation, preferred the tougher challenge to an easy run.
“We want to set up for CIF in the future hopefully, and we want to see how we can do against them,” Mariscal said. “We’d much rather play stronger teams who we can fight against than weaker teams, and it sets us up to play harder teams in the future.”
To finish out the regular season, the Spartans face their toughest challenges in matches against former league champions Cate School, Villanova Prep, and Cajon, who will come all the way from San Bernardino on Oct. 29 to play their tune-up match for CIF.
Ortiz thinks his squad has second-round potential and beyond, depending on pairing. From here, he said, the program can only continue to rise.
“The quality of kids, as far as those who wanted to commit to tennis, has just gotten better and better,” he said. “Every year we put them in, give everyone the opportunity, and we’re very fortunate to get a lot of kids on-court and in the classroom that just excel.”
Staff Writer Jeremy Thomas is a top-ranked doubles reporter. Contact him (them?) at jthomas@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 29 – Oct 6, 2011.
