It was a cold and blustery Wednesday in Solano County where the mighty division 4 Mountain House Mustangs' boys tennis team, winner of last year's division 4 sectional title, traveled north to Fairfield to take on the powerful Mustangs of division 3 Rodriguez High School in a non league match.
The Rodriguez Mustangs, led by one of the top players in the section, senior Evan Wadsworth, was a semi-final team in last year's division 2 sectional playoffs.
The match started promptly around 3 pm and all 6 singles matches were competitive at the start. Mountain House scored the first win when Rodriguez #6 Justin Wei forfeited to MH #6 Dhruv Jena down 1-6, 0-2 due to a leg injury. MH secured its second win (and point) when league singles champion Eidan Mercado defeated a feisty Rodriguez #3 freshman Joshua Williams 6-2, 6-1. Rodriguez scored their first win when Wadsworth defeated sophomore Aadi Rajan at #1 singles 6-1, 6-2. The next point went to MH when senior Pranav Sundar won his match 7-5, 6-0 at #4 singles overcoming some early jitters. Junior Zuhair Mughal played a very tough opponent at #5 singles and lost 4-6, 5-7 despite an early lead in the second set. The final singles match between MH #2 Daniel Zhang and Rodriguez #2 Danton Hsueh was an epic match which Zhang won 6-4, 6-3 (and was awarded player of the match by Coach Su) and gave MH a 4-2 lead after singles.
All 3 doubles matches were fierce battles and Rodriguez #1 drew first blood by beating the MH #1 team of Andy Su Jr and Charan Battula 6-4, 6-4. While the MH #2 team of Aarya Vishnu and Parthiv Algubelli fought hard, they eventually lost 5-7, 4-6. MH#3 team of sophomore Nathan Zakariah and freshman Anirudh Baskar won 6-2, 6-3 to give MH the very close 5-4 win.
"I am of course happy with the win against a well coached team but we are not where we need to be to win the sectional championship again. We have a lot of work to do before the playoffs" said an exhausted Coach Su at the end of the match.
Next up for these Mustangs? League opener at home next Monday against the Patriots of Beyer High.