Menlo School girls’ tennis seeks CCS title, revenge against Friday’s championship opponent Harker

The Central Coast Section tennis playoffs — ordinarily played at Bay Club Santa Clara — are being hosted by Menlo, as both the school’s boys’ and girls’ teams are the top seeds in their respective tournaments. While the Menlo boys won the CCS boys’ championship Thursday, the Lady Knights will go up against Harker for the CCS girls’ championship Friday. The quarterfinals and semifinals were played at Menlo earlier in the week.

“It’s real hectic,” Menlo head coach Bill Shine said prior to the championship rounds. “The boys are practicing down the street today (at Menlo College) and then they’ll switch tomorrow.”

Given the alternative of not playing at all — a possibility that seemed all too real to all high school athletics due to the coronavirus pandemic until a few months ago — playing a shortened, relatively slapdash season is something of a Godsend.

The Menlo girls got a wakeup call at the season’s outset though. While girls’ tennis is ordinarily played in the fall, it was an addition to the spring schedule in order to allow its student athletes some semblance of a season. Then, two matches into the season, Menlo suffered an unprecedented loss as the Lady Knights dropped a West Bay Athletic League match to Harker, snapping a 266-game league winning streak, and the first since Shine has coached the team.

“It was definitely a turning point,” Menlo No. 1 single Addie Ahlstrom said. “I think it was a wakeup call to take the rest of the season more seriously and just gear up. We didn’t know at that point if CCS was going to happen, but we knew if it was, we wanted to put our best foot forward and get them the next time.”

The next time is Friday, as Menlo and Harker are set for a rematch on the CCS championship stage.

“Our lineup is a little different because a lot has changed since then,” Shine said. “Hopefully we’re a little stronger.”

Stronger on the court? Hopefully. Stronger off the court? Most certainly.

Last March, Menlo School became one of the first institutions in the country to close its doors due to the coronavirus. An employee had come into contact with someone in Santa Clara County who was among the first wave of positive tests for COVID-19. The decision to quarantine the school, keeping all students off campus a week prior to the rest of the country beginning to shut down, was a controversial one.

“We got made fun of on Daily Mail,” Ahlstrom said of a March 4 news story in the popular UK publication titled “$50,000-a-year private school in America’s richest town shuts down after staff member had close contact with confirmed coronavirus case as CDC urges others not to close unless there are virus reports in the area.”

“And then the rest of the nation ended up following suit,” Ahlstrom said.

Ahlstrom was one of the lucky ones. She lives in a Woodside household of tennis fanatics, and spent quarantine staying in shape playing the sport with her father Lars, mother Michelle and younger sister Sadie. So, when Menlo reopened its campus in October for 25% capacity through the fall semester, Ahlstrom was ready to hit the tennis court competitively.

“I do have to say Menlo did a great job bringing us back to campus, letting us practice,” Ahlstrom said. “We got to practice as a team in the fall even though we couldn’t play matches, which was nice for some sense of normalcy.”

Getting the rest of the team up to speed hasn’t been that simple, according to Shine.

“It was hard,” Shine said. “About half the team plays all the time and the rest of the team is just seasonal. So, it’s almost like we’re starting over.”

Now, the stage is set for a big — and potentially poetic — finish for Ahlstrom’s Menlo career. The fourth-year varsity senior has a chance to lead a repeat as team champs, something Menlo last did in 2014 and ’15.

“Obviously closing with a CCS victory would be ideal,” Ahlstrom said. “It’s not going to be easy, but I think it’s within reach. That would just be the perfect way to finish my career at Menlo, and for the rest of the seniors. Because there’s a lot of us.”

Ahlstrom said, in light of Menlo’s March 11 loss to Harker, she’s perfectly comfortable with the description of the Knights heading into the CCS championship match with a chip on their shoulder. But the truth is she is friends with many of Harker’s players, and trains with four of them at Lu Tennis Academy Sports Club in Saratoga.

“I know it’s going to be a close match so there’s going to be a lot of excitement around it,” Ahlstrom said. “It would just be a great way to close out what’s been a really fun time at Menlo.”