Venice High Girls' Tennis Team Falls to Palisades Again

"They might be the best team in the city."

That's how highly Venice girls' tennis coach Mike Finegold rates the Palisades team that completed back-to-back sweeps of his Gondoliers on Monday. The loss is the fourth in a row for Venice. 

Venice traveled to Palisades last week to make up for a match that was postponed for extreme heat earlier in the season. Palisades dominated that match, blowing out Venice in all but one match. This time, Finegold shook up his lineup, and while the matches were much more competitive,  the end result was the same.

"I think the strategy worked. I felt like we had a good shot at winning three or four of the matches. At the very least, I think we were able to make them a bit nervous when I showed them the lineup card," Finegold said after the match.

Finegold used his top two singles players, Mara Heilig and Chante Geiger, to play No. 2 doubles. They played their match tight, but ultimately fell short 8-5.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the day was the play of freshman Andie Ritter, who played at No. 3 singles. After falling behind 5-1, she came back and made it close at 6-4, before ultimately losing 8-4.

"I noticed on Friday in her doubles match that Andie was really moving like a singles player. So I decided to try her out in singles, and I was very impressed. I thought that she played really tough, and I'm looking forward to getting her more involved in singles play," said Finegold.

Palisades sealed the victory when it knocked off the Mercado sisters for the second time in a row, 8-4. So far this year, Palisades is the only team to defeat Venice's top doubles team. 

In later matches, sophomore Natalie Blair lost 8-2 in No. 1 singles, junior Kelsie Yahata lost No. 2 singles 8-0, and No. 3 doubles Amber Cruickshank and Alexis Lucas lost 8-4. 

Despite the results, Finegold says he will do the lineup change again. "I liked the way that the lineup change went, and it's something that I will definitely implement against some of the top teams later on this season."

Venice will look to snap its losing streak Wednesday when it takes on Fairfax at home. Finegold is confident that his team is the third best in the league, and he is expecting his players to be at the top of their game. The match is scheduled to start at 2:30 p.m.