Young Redondo Boys Tennis Begins Season With Growing Pains

Not only is March the beginning of a new month, but it marked the beginning of the tennis season for the boys at Redondo Union. 

The Sea Hawks played host to a veteran South Torrance team and, despite winning their final three matches, lost their first match of the young season 11-7.

Young are the Sea Hawks, as Redondo graduated 12 seniors from last year’s team and has pulled youngsters from the JV ranks to fill out the varsity ranks.

“This is a new team, we have a lot of younger guys who want to compete and see if they can prove that they can meet the level of the seniors who graduated last year,” Redondo coach Jessica Seibert said.

One returning varsity member is talented sophomore Derek Levchenko who will anchor the number one singles spot.

Levchenko dropped his first match to Nick Lench 2-6, but rallied back to pick up two victories, winning 6-0 over Jake Ly and 7-5 against Brennan Faith.

“Derek played really well, we are looking forward to having him at the top,” Seibert said.

Levchenko is joined by newcomers Christian Grantz and Mahir Eusufzai also sophomores.

“South has pretty much the same lineup as last year. We had trouble with them then so we knew it was going to be tough,” Eusufzai said.

Grantz dropped his two matches 1-6, 0-6, with Eusufzai falling 0-6, 1-6 as well.  Collin Matthews subbed in for the Sea Hawks and picked up a 6-2 win over South’s sub Milan Suzuki, and Erik Fleming rounded out singles play losing 1-6.

“This season we have a young team, but we are ready for our chances on varsity,” Grantz said.

“Christian and Mahir know that they have tough competition to look forward to this season,” Seibert said.

On the doubles side, the number one duo of Chris Lew and Paul Levchenko swept their three matches with wins of 6-3, 6-3 and a close tiebreaker 7-6 (7-5) victory over Alan Tong and Yoshi Nanoyama.

“Our early goal is to come out of non-league play with a winning record so we can set ourselves up for a chance at a CIF birth after we compete in the Bay League,” Seibert said.

Redondo’s number two doubles team picked up one victory with Chris Farmer and Josh Obear winning 6-4 over Tong and Nanoyama.  They would lose their other matches 2-6, 1-6.

The third doubles team of Daniel Helfant and Sho Nioka dropped their matches 1-6, 1-6, 1-6.

With many newcomers seeing their first varsity action, the team remained optimistic as well as understanding that nothing will come easy this season.

“This shows us where we stand. It’s kind of a rude awakening, but we need the experience,” Grantz said.

“I was anxious going into the matches, the experience level is obvious for these players. They have minimal unforced errors at this level,” Eusufzai said.

The Sea Hawks will test themselves against non-league competition over the next three weeks before the Bay League season begins on March 24^th against West Torrance.

“This keeps us honest. It’s a taste of what to expect in league. We obviously would love to start with a win, but good competition is key early on,” Seibert said.