Boys’ tennis scrapes by Gunn in their first league match

The Palo Alto boys’ varsity tennis team beat Gunn Feb. 28 4-3 at home, starting off their league play strong.

The match was intense; everything came down to the last match between Paly’s Blake Smith (‘14) and Gunn’s Jinyan Jiang (’14). Smith won the first set 6-3 and Jiang won the second set 6-3, leaving the fate of the entire match to the last set.

Despite being down 5-3 in the last set, Smith was able to come back and take the win.

“I was thinking I have nothing to lose,” Smith said.  ”I just needed to loosen up and play my game, and that’s what I did.”

The other winners for the Vikings were Nicky Hu (‘12), winning two sets 6-0 and 6-1, Austin Leung (‘14), losing the first set 6-4, but came back and won the last two sets 6-2, and lastly, Mason Haverstock (‘13) and Jack Paladin (‘14), winning in two sets 6-4 and 6-2.

The Paly boys (2-0, 1-0) were excited about beating their cross-town rival, Gunn (0-1, 0-1).

“This was our rival, so anytime you can scrape out a win against your rival that’s pretty darn good,” coach Andy Harader said, “Blake came back from being down 5-2 in the third set, so that was remarkable; it was really a good win for us.”

The team hopes to continue its winning streak as they travel to Fresno this weekend to play in a tournament in which they will compete in five matches.

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