The Santa Rosa Junior College women’s tennis team took advantage of an easy 7-2 win over Sierra College by sitting some of their top players to get some of the bottom players experience in their conference opener Feb. 23 at Izzy Derkos tennis courts.
Sierra did not show up with a full line up, so SRJC began the day’s matches with a two-point lead and this allowed head coach Jay Samonte to have the flexibility to adjust his line-ups to give some of the weaker players a chance to improve.
“I purposely pulled out my number one,” coach Samonte said. “After we won doubles we were up 4-0 and we had five more matches to play and I pulled my number one [in singles Betsy Samonte], to push everybody up.”
SRJC handled Sierra with ease and dominated nearly all their matches, including an impressive performance from SRJC’s top doubles pair Coral Imnhoff and Betsy Samonte who beat their opponents 8-1.
“That was the best match we’ve played so far,” Imnhoff said. “Normally we start out slow but today we started fast from the very first game.”
SRJC was in control the entire day and focused more on improving than anything.
“It easily could’ve been a 9-0 sweep, but because I fiddled with the lineup knowing that we could probably get away with still winning the match and have everybody get a little more of a challenge,” coach Samonte said after the match. “That was kind of a calculated gamble on my part that worked out.”
SRJC faces off against American River College at 1 p.m. Feb. 26 at Izzy Derkos tennis courts.
