Champs looking for repeats

PASADENA — For a trio of local high school girls’ tennis players, they share a similar goal — repeat as league champions.

Crescenta Valley High singles player Erin LeVoir and Glendale’s doubles team of Sevana Zargarian and Samantha Sismundo are halfway there.

LeVoir and Zargarian and Sismundo each won their respective sets Monday afternoon with little trouble during the Pacific League prelims at Pasadena High.

The third-seeded LeVoir, a junior, opened with an 8-0 win against 14th-seeded Maria Khachrtyan of Glendale before picking up an 8-4 victory against fifth-seeded Sun-Mo Koo of Burbank.

LeVoir will next meet second-seeded Francis Dean of Arcadia in a semifinal match at 1 p.m. Wednesday at the same venue. The other semifinal match will feature top-seeded Nadia Pacheco of Arcadia against fourth-seeded Tatevik Harutyunyan of Burbank.

“Coming in, I was a little nervous,” said LeVoir, the reigning All-Area Singles Player of the Year. “I kind of expected coming in to get to Wednesday.

“I’m looking forward to Wednesday. All four of us are good in different ways. I haven’t beaten Francis this season, but it doesn’t mean I can’t beat her Wednesday.”

The top-seeded duo of Zargarian and Sismundo worked diligently in opening with an 8-2 win against a 16th-seeded duo from Pasadena. They then worked together to earn an 8-4 win against ninth-seeded Tenny Soleymani and Viktoriya Shumakova of Crescenta Valley.

Zargarian and Sismundo will face off against fifth-seeded Amy Qui and Nicole Gandasutisna of Arcadia in a semifinal match. The other semifinal contest will be second-seeded Audri Pardo and Ani Ebrahimian of Crescenta Valley against third-seeded Elizabeth Lieu and Michelle Zhu of Arcadia.

“We tried to get things going right away, and we did that by playing our game,” Zargarian said. “Wednesday will be a lot tougher.

“We have a strategy that works in that I go to the net and Sammy does well with the ground strokes. We just want to win it again.”

Pardo and Ebrahimian teamed up for an 8-2 opening win against 15th-seeded Vy Nguyen and Stacey Rutherford of Hoover. They then got an 8-2 win against 10th-seeded Kendall Capshaw and Jennifer Aproux of Burroughs.

Eight-seeded Carineh Ghafafian of Crescenta Valley posted an 8-4 victory against ninth-seeded Hana Jang of Glendale before suffering an 8-1 second-round loss to Pacheco.

Glendale’s doubles team of Samantha Jaramillo and Adrine Babakhanyan began with an 8-3 win against 11th-seeded Andrea Megerdichian and Hana Park of Crescenta Valley. Jaramillo and Babakhanyan then dropped an 8-6 decision to Lieu and Zhu.

Soleymani and Shumakova opened with an 8-4 win against eight-seeded Ayesha Ibrahim and Allison Scallon of Burbank.