Dolphins Denied 30th Title

Heading into its annual City Finals showdown with Granada Hills on October 30, the Palisades High girls tennis team was supremely confident it could regain the Open Division championship the Highlanders wrested away last season. After all, the Dolphins‘ lineup featured two players who were not on the team a year ago—sophomore Shaya Jovanovic and freshman EJ Martin, who are friends and highly-ranked junior players. They combined to win five of seven singles sets but that was not quite enough to keep Granada Hills from repeating with a 17 to 12.5 victory in the round robin format at Balboa Sports Center in Encino.

The Highlanders’ No. 1 duo and reigning two-time City Individual doubles champions Georgia Brown and Priscilla Grinner rallied from a 4-3 deficit to beat Palisades’ No. 2 tandem of Sashi Gancheva and Penelope Mihal, 6-4, completing a sweep of their three sets (each worth one and a half points) and pushing their team past the 15-point threshold needed to clinch.      The No. 2 team of Amy Nghiem and America Fragoso also swept and Sayuri Parandian won all four of her sets at No. 1 singles for top-seeded Granada Hills, which captured its 14th section crown and second straight in the four-team Open bracket. Palisades beat El Camino Real 25.5 to 2 while the Highlanders beat Marshall 26.5 to 3 in the semifinals two days earlier.     

Parandian and Jovanovic met in the last rotation in the finals and the Granada Hills senior prevailed 8-6 in a tiebreaker. Martin was subbed out for her last set.

Ella Engel and Nicole Nguyen rounded out Palisades’ singles spots. Gancheva and Mihal beat the Highlanders’ third team as did Palisades’ top duo of Anais Israels and Anne Kelly and the No. 3 duo of Reese Trepanier and Dori Jamhedor. The Dolphins have won 29 section titles since 1973, including 21 under coach Bud King.   

Palisades and Granada Hills have faced off in 13 of the last 14 finals and the two schools have combined to capture the last 23 upper division titles.