Burlingame moves into PAL girls' tennis final

The Panthers, using a tried-and-true strategy implemented by longtime head coach Bill Smith, worked the plan to perfection. Burlingame swept the three doubles matches and then picked up a win at No. 4 singles to pull out a 4-3 win over the third-seeded Dons Wednesday in Burlingame.

Smith, however, was not around to see it. Burlingame assistant coach Doug Stone said Smith “did not sound good” Monday and missed practice that day and the Panthers’ regular-season finale against Menlo-Atherton Tuesday.

Even without their head coach, the Panthers still took care of business.

“We knew it would be tough,” Stone said. “It came right down to the end.”

It became evident early that the match would most likely break along the singles-doubles line. Aragon was up a set in three of the four singles matches, while Burlingame controlled the three doubles matches with first-set wins.

Eventually, the team match hinged on the No. 4 singles match, where Burlingame’s Michelle Moshkovoy posted a 6-3, 6-1 victory.

At the time, it evened the team match at 2-all, leaving the first two doubles and No. 3 singles left to determine the winner.

Burlingame, however, clinched the match quickly. The No. 2 doubles team of Samantha Tom and Evelyn Du gave the Panthers’ their third point with a 6-1, 6-4 victory. About a minute later, the No. 1 doubles team of Kaleia Daga and Rorie Stone clinched the team-winning fourth point with a 6-1, 3-6, (10-3) victory.

“My hope was to sweep the four singles (matches),” said Aragon head coach Dave Owdom.

Owdom was forced to juggle his three doubles teams when one of his starters was unavailable. He ended up putting together for the first time Kexin Zhang, a senior, with freshman Meilin Rife, who pushed the Burlingame pair to the brink at No. 1 doubles.

“I had to scramble to find an extra player (to fill out the doubles roster),” said Owdom, who was actually quite pleased with the performance of his doubles team.

“It went pretty good in the doubles,” Owdom said.

Aragon took the first point of the match at No. 1 singles when Varsha Jawadi rallied from a 4-1 deficit to take the first set 6-4 over Burlingame’s Mila Mulready.

Jawadi and Mulready are two of the top-3 players in the Peninsula Athletic League, but did not get a chance to play against each other until Tuesday.

Jawadi missed the first match between the teams, while Mulready was unavailable for the second meeting.

And the question of who is better will still have to be answered another day. As the two players took a break after the first set, Mulready announced she had to retire. Coughing and sniffling throughout the first set, Mulready was in no condition to take on Jawadi.

When asked about Mulready’s availability for Thursday’s championship match, Coach Stone said, “About 50%.”

Jawadi’s win gave Aragon a 1-0 lead in the team points, but it was short-lived. Burlingame’s No. 3 doubles team of Malia Schmidt and Spencer Dobos gave the Panthers their first point with a 6-0, 6-3 win.

“They’ve been solid all season,” Stone said of Schmidt and Dobos.

Anna He gave Aragon its second point with a 6-0, 6-2 win at No. 2 singles, which was followed by Moshkovoy’s win at No. 4 singles.

Burlingame will now gets its chance to beat top-seeded Carlmont, which swept the two-match season series from the Panthers.

But Stone said the matches could have gone either way.

“We always walked away (from the Carlmont matches), ‘If we could have won this match, or if we could have won that match (the result might have been different),’” Stone said. “We’ll go into [Thursday’s match] expecting to win.”

For Aragon, the season is likely over. The Dons finished the season with an overall record of 8-9 and a CCS at-large bid is probably a long shot.

“We’re not ready yet (for CCS),” Owdom said.

Burlingame will now take on top-seeded Carlmont at 4 p.m. in Belmont, The Scots beat 14-0 Ocean Division champ Sequoia, 7-0.

“Sequoia is always very competitive,” said Carlmont head coach Margaret Goldsmith, whose team finished runner up to Menlo-Atherton in the Bay Division standings. “We were pretty steady. My team played well.”