Dolphins Tennis Is Riding High at City Boys Individual Tourney

It doesn’t look like much is going to slow down the Palisades High tennis team in this year’s City Section Boys Individual Tournament at Balboa Park. The Dolphins placed three players in the singles draw and five teams in the doubles draw and heading into yesterday’s semifinals’ matches, Pali players comprised half of the remaining draw in each bracket. In the top half of the singles draw, No. 1 Oliver Thornton and No. 5 Joseph Silvers each reached the semis and played each other yesterday (after the Palisadian-Post went to press). Neither had much trouble getting there: Thornton beat Anthony Ya of Carson, 6-1, 6-2, then disposed of El Camino Real’s Nicholas Koretsky, 6-0, 6-1 in the quarterfinals, while Silvers took care of Gardena’s Colby White, 6-1, 6-0, and William Chung of Granada Hills, 6-0, 6-1. The only Dolphins singles player not to advance was third-seeded senior Max Licona, who has battled foot troubles for parts of the season. Licona fell in the second round to Grant’s Mauricio Rosales, 6-2, 6-4. Meanwhile in doubles, an all-Pali final looks inevitable. The tournament’s top seeds’No. 1 Sam Catanzaro and Spencer Pekar and No. 2 Robert Silvers and Trinity Thornton’gained the semifinals and will play in the finals if seeds hold. Catanzaro and Pekar won 6-1, 6-0 in the second round and 6-1, 6-1 in the quarters to set-up yesterday’s semifinal match against the fourth-seeded team from Granada Hills. In the draw’s bottom half, Thornton and Silvers won in the second round, 6-1, 6-1, and defeated Pali teammates Cody Schiffer and Myles Rodgers-Halliday (the tournament’s No. 7 seed) in the quarters, 6-3, 6-3. The Dolphins also placed two unseeded teams (Jeemon Woo and Brendel Palumbo, Alex Nam and Austin Gingold) in the doubles draw and each shared the same fate, winning their first-round match in straight sets before falling in the second round to a ranked opponent (Woo/Palumbo to the No. 3 seed from Eagle Rock, Nam/Gingold to the No. 4 seed from Granada). Fittingly, yesterday the remaining Pali teams got the chance to avenge those losses, as Catanzaro/Pekar took on Granada’s team, while Thornton/Silvers met Eagle Rock’s side, the tournament’s top-four teams all advancing to the semis. The tournament finals for both singles and doubles are set for Monday at 1 p.m. at Balboa Park.