It took Canyon’s No. 1 girls tennis singles player Amber Kashay close to an hour and a half to win her first set against Ashwinii Saravanan of Simi Valley.
Down 1-5, Kashay fought back to win a tiebreaker set 7-6 (7-5), and the junior went on to win her second set 6-0 before falling 2-6 in the last set.Â
Kashay was able to get two points for her team, but the Cowboys fell 14-4 to the Pioneers on Thursday at Canyon.
No. 2 singles player Brooklyn Rappe drew inspiration from Kashay’s never-give-up mentality and battled to win her third set 6-3. She lost her first two sets 0-6 and 3-6.Â
“Effort isn’t a talent, we can control the effort we give and that was a good example, she never gave up until she won,” Bristow said of Kashay. “She came back, I know she was tired, but finished up and set an example for our No. 2 Brooklyn who won her last match. I’m proud of them.”
Maya Bernal, the No. 3 singles player for Canyon, earned a forfeit win because Saravanan had to retire after her 80-minute set against Kashay.
Despite being down early after the first round, the Cowboys never wavered and continued to play through until the end.
“We talk about that over and over, we’re not going to go stroke for stroke with a lot of teams, but we can control the effort and our attitude,” Bristow said.
Bristow encouraged his players to approach the net and stay aggressive throughout the match, and is going to use a similar approach when Canyon opens up Foothill league play against Valencia next week.
“All of them I tell to charge the net,” Bristow said. “We work a lot on our net game at practice, getting to the net and being aggressive, drawing our opponent to the net. Be aggressive, find the angles, try to end the points early is going to be our best bet so that’s what we’ve been working on.”
Canyon will travel to Valencia on Thursday for the first league match of the season. The match is scheduled to start at 3 p.m.Â
“We’ve got to be open to playing a different kind of game, we can’t go toe to toe with them,” Bristow said. “Until that match we’re going to keep working on getting to the net and being aggressive.”
