STATMEISTER'S LHS PLAYER OF THE WEEK
by Mike "The Statmeister" Loney
It was getting too dark to play.
It was cold and windy, the grueling match had started 3 1/2 hours before, she had blown a big lead (up 5-2 to down 5-6) and her third set opponent, the #1 player on a solid Templeton squad, was serving.
The rest of the Lompoc and Templeton varsity teams, both coaches, and several dozen spectators were gathered around watching the remaining contest that would decide the outcome of the match--a sophomore against the senior leader of a senior-laden team.
The Lompoc High School girls tennis team entered the season with more hopes than expectations. Most of the squad was inexperienced, young, or both. Then the season started - and things got even worse.
Number one singles player (three-sport athlete, senior leader and best player) COURTNEY STUMPO injured her back, the transport van got stuck in the sand at Morro Bay and had to be towed out, and the girls seemed to be in the same condition metaphorically. They kept coming up just short, had problems closing out opponents out, etc. - out of sync and stuck. They weren't bad, they just couldn't seem to get over the hump.
Then on Tuesday (Sept. 25) vs. Righetti, coach LORETTA JENSEN shuffled the deck by moving one of her doubles players to #3 singles. The new girl was a 10th-grader who was new to the sport last year when she played on JV doubles and had never played singles for either the JV or varsity.
Jensen’s experiment worked out well, the new girl winning three sets to none against a tenacious Righetti group in an 11-7 LHS win, and Jensen quickly decided to repeat the experiment the next Thursday against Templeton. So there she was --soph CONNIE AGUILERA- on the western end of the Dave Bickmore Courts at LHS. A 6-0 win in the third round by Stumpo had given Lompoc a 9-8 lead; if Connie won -so did Lompoc, if she lost - the 9-9 tie would be decided on total games.
Aguilera and her senior opponent battled through a series of very long points (often 25-30 shots), tying the set at six games apiece and sending it into the best of seven tiebreaker. Aguilera fell behind, double faulting to 4-5, before rallying to 6-5 and winning by breaking her opponent’s serve to win the match! Aguilera went 2-1 on the day helping Lompoc win 10-8. She had gone 5-1 in her first two matches.
I am therefore proud to announce that the Statmeister LHS Player of the Week is awarded to sophomore CONNIE AGUILERA
P.S. Connie, you can stop blushing now.
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