Sports
SMC Players Qualify for State Tennis Championships
Mozolyuk makes cut in singles; Hansard and Rodriguez in doubles for the Individuals Tournament.
Having already punched its ticket to the state dual team championships, the team showed up at Grossmont College in El Cajon on Thursday eager to prove it not only has the best squad from top to bottom, but the best individual players to boot.
Not wanting to over extend herself given the magnitude of the tournament later this week, Corsairs top singles player needed only to reach the quarterfinals of the Southern California Individual Regionals to qualify for the state finals. She did one better, advancing to the semifinals before withdrawing.
Mozolyuk, the No. 1 ranked community college player in California, had a bye in the first round, then beat Saddleback's Karley Pletcher, 6-3, 6-3, in the second round Thursday. The next day she beat Jourdan Jefferson of Mt. San Antonio, 6-2, 6-4, in the round of 16 and College of the Desert's Krista Cole, 6-1, 6-1, in the quarterfinals. She defaulted her Saturday morning semifinal against Sharon Reibstein, who then upset Grossmont teammate Jazmin Ortiz, 6-1, 6-3, in the final.
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"She's played a ton of tennis over the last two weeks and she just needed a little rest," SMC head coach said of his top player. "A few days of rest and she'll be ready to win a team and individual [state] title."
In doubles, the Corsairs' top duo of and also qualified for the state tournament, making it all the way to the finals before falling to Reibstein and Ortiz, 6-2, 7-6 (5), on Saturday afternoon. Ranked No. 2 in Southern California, the SMC pair breezed through its half of the draw without dropping a set.
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Now the Corsairs (17-1) can concentrate on the state championships Thursday through Saturday at the Sierra Sport & Racquet Club in Fresno. In the dual team competition, SMC will play Sierra (15-0), the No. 1 seed in the Northern California Regional, on Thursday at 1 p.m. The format is six singles and three doubles matches, each worth one point. The first school to five points wins.
The Individual singles and doubles tournaments begin Friday at 9 a.m. and will progress through the quarterfinals. The singles and doubles semifinals will start at 9 a.m. Saturday, to be followed by the championship matches in the afternoon.
