Athletes of the Week: Carlmont’s Mallika Agrawal and Megan Bence

With the Lady Scots winning last week’s Peninsula Athletic League team championship tournament — sweeping Burlingame 7-0 in Thursday’s finals — Agrawal and Bence cruised to a 6-3, 6-3 victory. The unbeaten duo is now 15-0 in heads-up play and has yet to drop a set this season.

“Tennis is about chemistry,” Carlmont head coach Margaret Goldsmith said. “And it just so happens Mallika and Megan play the same style of tennis. … So, it just clicked.”

Agrawal and Bence are part of Carlmont’s top-heavy doubles rotation that includes No. 1 doubles Lisa Borchelt and Brooke Franaszek. The two teams have flip-flopped between the Scots’ top two doubles rankings this season. In fact, Borchelt and Franaszek are the only two players in the PAL who have stood toe-to-toe with Agrawal and Bence, who spent the first half of the league season at Carlmont’s No. 1 team, until an in-team challenge saw Borchelt and Franaszek win a closely contested intrasquad match.

“There’s literally [one] point that separates them … so they’re very equally matched,” Goldsmith said.

Playing against mostly different opponents at No. 2 doubles through the second half of the season didn’t slow down Agrawal and Bence for a minute. Even against PAL Bay Division champion Menlo-Atherton — with the Bears winning both head-to-head team decisions — Agrawal and Bence came away with individual victories both times.

“I feel like we felt pretty confident,” Bence said. “Obviously, going against M-A, they have a big name, and we were really nervous. But we pulled through.”

For Bence, meeting Agrawal was a godsend. The freshman is accustomed to playing doubles — she was a mixed-doubles player last year as an eighth grader at Ralston Middle School — but also thrives in singles play, a product of coming from a tennis family, often sparring with her older brother Nathan, who is heading into his junior season with the Carlmont boys’ tennis team.

It was the first week of practice when Carlmont’s mighty No. 2 doubles were paired up, just a few days into Bence’s high school career.

“And I didn’t have to do it alone,” Bence said. “And I really appreciated that as a freshman.”

And Goldsmith’s keen eye for chemistry isn’t lost on Agrawal and Bence.

“We never went through any other partners,” Agrawal said. “She somehow just knew … and then we crushed it. And it just kept getting better and better.”

The pairing means just as much Agrawal, perhaps even more so. Tennis has always been the senior’s main sport, but it took some time to prove herself. As a sixth grader, in her first year at Ralston Middle School, she was cut from the team. That cut was made by Goldsmith, who at the time coached at Ralston Middle School.

Agrawal had to go it alone for the next year. She tells a harrowing story about lugging a basket of tennis balls to the park every day to work on her game. The level of commitment in retrieving that basket of balls time and again is one thing. But the harrowing part is how the 90-pound sixth grader took a beating from the basket smacking her in the legs walking to and from the park every day.

“I just love the sport,” Agrawal said. “I didn’t have a whole lot of other things in middle school … so I just channeled it with tennis.”

Now, Agrawal and Bence are eyeing a run in the PAL individual tournament this week. They are two of six Carlmont competitors who qualified for the three-day tourney. Borchelt and Franaszek will also compete in the doubles tournament. No. 1 Chloe Khachadourian and No. 2 Ashwika Narajan are slated to play singles.

As the season winds down, however, there’s an air of bittersweet. With Agrawal set to graduate, the dynamic duo of she and Bence will be a one-season act.

“I think for the next three years, I’m super bummed that she’s leaving, but I think I’m going to go for singles because I couldn’t imagine a better doubles partner,” Bence said.

But the spark the two have brought to Carlmont, marked not just by their results in PAL play, but in the intrasquad competition with Borchelt and Franaszek, has helped take the girls’ tennis program to the next level.

“They all compete with each other, and it just creates a culture of competition, but friendly competition,” Goldsmith said. “They can’t just [phone] it in. So, I’m really impressed with them.”