Cougars At Top Of Tennis Game During Building Year
By Jack Danilewicz
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Kaiser’s tennis captain
Emmellin Tung. Photo by
Nathalie Walker,
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For the Kaiser girls tennis team, there was no direct line to the post-season this spring.
If anything, just completing the regular season was a triumph, to hear longtime coach Kristie Yamamoto tell it.
“We only had six at tryouts, so we didn’t know if we’d be able to even have a team,” she said. “You have to have eight to compete. We encouraged the girls to ask their friends if anyone was interested in playing tennis.”
Eventually the Cougars were able to field a full team and, although the absence of a few players over spring break prompted forfeits, Kaiser still managed a fifth-place finish in the Oahu Interscholastic Association Eastern Division’s 11-team league during the regular season.
On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, at the BYU-Hawaii campus in Laie, the Cougars will take part in the East’s qualifying tournament, which is a single-elimination format wherein the OIA’s top eight finishers move on to the Carlsmith Ball Tennis State Championships next month.
To be well-represented with state tournament qualifiers would be no small feat for the Cougars, given their pre-season plight.
“This is a very unique team,” said Yamamoto, who coached the Cougars girls teams to an OIA title in 2004. “This is the first year we’ve had a group of players that were so involved in other activities outside of tennis. We have a couple in the band, one on the girls basketball team ... they find the time to be here, and they’re very committed. To have them push themselves as they have is great for them and us.
“We practice every day and have matches on Saturday, so Sunday is their only day off.”
Last week, as the Cougars prepared for the East’s qualifying round, Yamamoto was busy fine-tuning her lineup. The event was originally supposed to be five days earlier but was moved back. Yamamoto didn’t mind the extra practice time.
“A few extra days should really help us,” she said.
Seniors Emmelin Tung and Kimi Harada-Kato are among the Cougars’ best bets to qualify for the state tournament. Tung has qualified each of the past three seasons - twice as a singles player and once as a doubles partner. Harada-Kato was on the East’s first-place doubles team during the Soft Tennis season last fall.
“Emmelin came to us as a very seasoned tennis player,“Yamamoto said. “She brings a lot of experience. She has good ground strokes, a good serve, and she moves well around the court. And Kimi works really hard. She’s very aggressive, and her strength is her net play.
“We didn’t pair them together until the very end of the regular season,” she added.“Emmelin hurt her back and her hip, so she wasn’t able to move as well.”
Harada-Kato had been paired with Nina Ho during the regular season. Ho and junior Rei Iwakuma, who had been playing singles during the regular season, will form a doubles team this week.
“This is the first time we’ve put them together, and right away they worked well together. They have fun together and pick each other up.
“Rei works harder than any other member of the girls team. She’s very competitive and never gives up. She’s had to adjust her entire game (to doubles for the post-season), and she’s worked very hard at it.”
Angela Kim, Mari Mathewson, Jillian Oyama and Aisha Watson round out the Kaiser team. With the Cougars having undergone a lineup makeover recently, physical repetitions have almost taken a back seat to monitoring Kaiser’s collective mindset, according to Yamamoto.
“For the girls, a lot of it is mental - their having to readjust. At this point, you’re not going to teach too many new things,” Yamamoto said. “It’s about them adapting to their partner’s style of play.
“Right now, they’re definitely playing the best that they’ve played all year. Now that we have the pairings (set), their talents are starting to show. Hopefully, we’ll be at a point (this week) where they can just kind of go out and play.”
The Carlsmith Ball Tennis State Championships will take place May 9-12 at the Wailea and Makena Tennis Clubs on Kauai.
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