LBHS Girls' Tennis: Ready for a Smashing Season

Story submitted by Kristine Michaels:

The Laguna Beach High School Girls' varsity tennis team is back in action and shaping up to form a solid team for the upcoming fall season.  Led by head coach Don Davis for his second season with the Breaker girls, the team hopes to emerge once again as undefeated Orange Coast League champions.

One significant change for the Breakers this season is that they will be competing in Division 2 for the post league CIF competition.  Coach Don and the girls will be working hard to develop a team that will be very competitive in CIF this season.

Tryout/Practices started on August 16 and will continue until August 31. No need to wait until School starts.  Match play will begin on August 29th at 3:30 p.m. against Sage Hill on the varsity Breakers' home courts.  On August 30, the Breakers will see how they match up away against Mater Dei at 3 p.m.  The JV team will be competing on the opposite courts on the same day.

Throughout the first week of tryouts, Coach Don was impressed with the fact that many of the returning girls had improved since last season.  He sees the new team forming nicely and believes that they should have better depth than last year.  There was a large turnout of incoming freshman (17 in all) at the tryouts, and some will make the varsity squad.

This year’s varsity team will have 10 returning players:

Brooke Michaels – Junior, Kira Hamilton – Sophomore, Chloe Mansour – Senior, Katelyn Bo – Sr., Bailey Jaeger – So., Nicole Doiron – Jr., Sarah Nederlander – Jr., Stephanie Tat – Jr., Shawna Yang – Jr., and Madeline Loomis – So.

Brooke and Kira; Chloe and Katelyn; Bailey and Sarah were the top 3 doubles teams from last season, and Stephanie was the third singles player based upon the lineup played during CIF.  Brooke and Kira went through to the quarterfinals qualifier of individual CIF playoffs as a doubles team.  Both will be returning to anchor the team in singles this year.

The young talent will have to step up to makeup the loss of last season’s top two singles players.  The Breakers #1 singles Lauren Michaels, who will be playing for the Cornell University varsity tennis team this fall, was the individual league champion, earning All League First Team in singles, and the Orange Coast League MVP her senior season.  At #2 singles, the Breakers also lose the always-steady Claire Jaeger, who also earned First Team All League honors last season.  Claire will be attending Notre Dame University.

There were six significant newcomers to the tryouts this year.  Although the Varsity roster has not been determined yet, Coach Don was excited to see such depth show up to the courts to battle for a varsity spots.  There were five strong freshman candidates:  Ashley Shelton, Natasha Keces, Ashley Fair, Natalie Selin, and Jackie Cenan.  Along with these standout freshman was one senior transfer student, Dominique Willette from Costa Rica.  Dominique was a Laguna Beach resident until she was 5 and has two aunts that played tennis for LBHS.  The final roster should be determined next week.

Coach Don expects this young team to be strong at the top with very good depth.  He believes that the team will blossom as the season progresses.