Dolphins Dethroned by Taft

Palisades Falls Short in Bid for Third Consecutive City Section Tennis Title

Defending a championship is often more difficult than winning it. Palisades High’s boys tennis team found out the hard way last Friday at the hands of Woodland Hills Taft, which derailed the Dolphins’ ride to a third straight City title with a convincing 21-8 1/2 victory in the finals at Balboa Sports Center in Encino. The balls that seemed to bounce Palisades’ way in last year’s final fell on the other side of the net this time around and by the end of the second rotation of round robin, Coach Bud Kling sensed it might not be the Dolphins’ day. “This is deja vu, only backwards,” Kling said. “Today, Taft did exactly what we did to beat Granada Hills [in the finals] last year. In the first two rotations, we had big leads in four sets. We didn’t play that badly, they simply outplayed us in clutch situations.” Justin Atlan, Kyung Choi, Ariel Oleynik and Matt Goodman each won one out of four singles sets for top-seeded Palisades (22-4), not surprising given the Toreadors’ superiority in singles. Doubles was supposed to be where the Dolphins held a decided advantage. Knowing that, Taft Coach Tom Wright gambled by having his best singles player, sophomore Josh Tchan, play doubles with senior Aaron Teitelbaum. “We’d lost to Palisades in the semifinals the last two years, and we only won one doubles set in those two matches,” Wright said. “I was expecting their doubles to be dominating again, so I dropped Josh down thinking that if he could win two sets that was all we’d need in doubles.” Not only did Tchan and Teitelbaum sweep all three of their sets (each worth 1 1/2 points), so did the Toreadors’ No. 2 team of senior Ben Black and junior A.J. Minasian. Trailing, 4-2, against Palisades’ top duo of Mason Hays and Sepehr Safii, Tchan and Teitelbaum reeled off four consecutive games to give third-seeded Taft an 8-4 lead. “Tom did exactly what I would have done with his lineup,” said Kling, who has led the Dolphins to 16 section titles since he took over the program in 1979. “He’s done a great job with that program and I’m happy for him. I’ve won plenty of times.” Taft clinched the match when the line judge overruled Jeremy Shore’s “out” call with Teitelbaum serving on set point, giving the Toreadors 16 points — one more than the 15 needed for victory.