APTOS — Tennis season is well underway and Aptos High School is having another strong season. They now seem ready to compete for a league championship.
During head coach Rich Taylor’s tenure with Aptos, his squads have never finished worse than second place. The Mariners (8-1, 4-1) appear to have the star players and depth to get it done this year.
Junior Kourosh Safari is the team’s number one singles player. Safari is playing his first year with Aptos tennis, but he’s been an experienced club and tournament player since he was young.
“Kourosh is a very athletic player. He’s big off the ground. He can shoot well. He does everything well,” Taylor said. “He lives, breathes, eats tennis.”
Senior Jackson Ward, a four-year player, is the number two singles. Sophomore Carter Bond is the number three and senior Collin Robins is the number four singles.
For Taylor, one of his challenges as a tennis coach is to inculcate a team mentality in a highly individual sport.
“You want to win your match, but there are seven points and every point is the same,” Taylor said. “Getting kids to buy into a team environment can be foreign to them. Over the years I have stressed a culture that emphasizes a team environment. It may sound corny, but we want to be a family.”
For Taylor, teaching tennis to younger, inexperienced players is one of his biggest challenges.
“Tennis is a skill acquisition sport,” he said. “In football, if you’re a good athlete you can make contributions to your team immediately. If you begin tennis this week, you need to acquire the skills. Otherwise much more inferior athletes can beat you.”
Moving up to the top spots at Aptos is not a given. It is something that needs to be earned.
“We do something called challenge matches,” Taylor said. “We have a ladder. You’re placed at a particular place based on your results. It can be intense. For some teams, it seems like a life-and-death situation. Sometimes they’re such close friends that they don’t want to challenge each other.”
The lone bump in the road so far has been a 4-3 loss to rival Santa Cruz High School on Tuesday. Last season Aptos tied Santa Cruz for first place in the Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League. It was the first time in five seasons that Santa Cruz did not win the outright title.
For Monte Vista Christian, half of the team is from the area and the other half are dorm students from Asia. MVC has been very diverse during head coach Steve Striffler’s seven-year tenure.
“Here you get a lot of kids from diverse backgrounds,” Striffler said. “They are challenged to balance athletics, school and traveling back home to visit family. When they have to travel thousands of miles away it makes scheduling difficult.”
MVC moved up to the first division in the Monterey Bay League Gabilan this season. Playing alongside historically powerful teams like Carmel, Stevenson and Salinas high schools has motivated Striffler’s players to up their game.
“As the season progresses they’re finding an understanding about the focus and intensity needed to play at a high level,” Striffler said.
Being in the upper division has been a challenge for the Mustangs. At the moment they are 3-7, 2-6 in the Monterey Bay League Gabilan Division.
Senior Antonio Ruiz and junior Mitchell Markoff alternate between the number one and number two spots in singles. Junior Nathan Amaris and junior Benji Hsu round out the number three and number four spots.
For doubles, senior Parker Hughes and junior Charlie Xiao are in the number one spot. Junior Terry Zhuang and junior David Zhou are the number two team and freshman Bob Xia and junior Tiger Wang are the last team.
Like the other spring sports in the area, MVC’s early season was hindered by the wet weather. The timing of spring break, as well as coordinating other schools’ spring break times, makes it difficult to schedule matches.
Aptos will be back in action on April 11. MVC plays again at home against Everett-Alvarez on Tuesday.
