Playoff run for Crescenta Valley girls' tennis comes to an end

Crescenta Valley Falcons fall to Santa Monica in CIF Southern Section Division II first-round contest.

October 31, 2012|By Charles Rich, charles.rich@latimes.com

For the second time in as many days, Crescenta Valley High’s girls’ doubles team of Viktoriya Shumakova and Jackie Dilanchyan had little difficulty continuing their late-season surge.

Shumakova and Dilanchyan worked together to record another postseason sweep, losing just six games.

Unfortunately for Crescenta Valley, it wasn’t enough as its season finished Wednesday with a 14-4 road loss against third-seeded Santa Monica in a CIF Southern Section Division II first-round playoff match.

Crescenta Valley, which began its postseason with an 11-7 wild-card win against host Fullerton on Tuesday, finished 13-6. The Falcons took third in the Pacific League.

Shumakova and Dilanchyan won, 6-4, 6-1, 6-1. The duo combined to lose four games against Fullerton.

“We were on top of our game,” said Dilanchyan, who worked with Shumakova to advance to the semifinals at the league tournament. “It’s tough [for the team] to lose, but we have a lot of good players coming back next year, and that will make us want to work even harder.”

Crescenta Valley, which last finished as low as third in league in 1994, won just one singles set. Seline Auvazian posted a 6-4 victory for the Falcons. Auvazian won a pair of sets in the postseason.

Crescenta Valley had trouble matching up in singles with Santa Monica, which won the Ocean League championship.

“Santa Monica has a real good No. 1 singles player and we really couldn’t handle their singles lineup,” Crescenta Valley first-year Coach Sam Hyun said. “We lost a couple of sets in singles where we had the lead, but couldn’t close it out.

“We did OK in doubles, but Jackie and Viktoriya came out real strong and played great for the second straight day. Getting this far will help us to get better next year. We just need to practice more and we have a lot of people coming back.”

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