With an explosive start in their pre-season, Diamond Bar High School’s varsity boys tennis has swung into their spring season with a thirst for another league title.
Starting in mid-February, the team won their first preseason game against Damien High School with a score of 16-2. The team would then lose 16-2 against Beckman High School and Claremont High School and 12-6 to Ayala High School before closing the preseason with a win against Chino Hills High School 16-2.
“The varsity team is pretty solid as of now. But we’re still figuring out how to arrange our lineup,” sophomore Harry Liang said via Instagram.
According to Liang, roughly a quarter of the team has sustained injuries from playing the sport. They have also been unable to participate in practice or compete.
“At the moment, we’ve just been experimenting with a lot of our doubles pairings,” senior Jeremy Wang said.
Despite the constantly changing pairings, the team has managed to stay consistent with two standout players in senior Vishnu Sriram and freshman Solon Au. According to Liang, both are solid hitters, and Au specializes in on-court strategy.
“Solon’s a very aggressive player and sets up the ball so he can win, almost like he’s playing chess,” Liang said. “He can almost predict what he wants to do and what’s going to happen.”
The team kicked off their regular season with a flawless 18-0 victory over Los Altos and hasn’t looked back since. The team would win 15-3 against Rowland the very next day, have a near-perfect 17-1 win against South Hills, and another win over Rowland and Walnut 13-5.
The team’s second match against Rowland was a result of DBHS’s different doubles pairings and Rowland’s out-for-vengeance aggressive playstyle.
“Our coach likes to change up our pairings because he wants us to stay versatile,” Wang said. “He wants us to be able to play with anyone in case of an emergency.”