County Players Dominate Early Rounds

Orange County players dominated the Southern Section individual boys’ tennis preliminary Saturday at Edison High, earning seven of the eight qualifying spots.

The players advance to next Saturday’s round of 16 at Sea Cliff Tennis Club in Huntington Beach, where they will meet qualifiers from the three other regional preliminaries.

In doubles, the three top-seeded teams advanced along with Aliso Niguel’s unseeded team of Jason Mednick and Jonathan Lippert.

Mednick and Lippert, after a first-round bye, defeated Brea Olinda’s Mike Le and Charlie Ahn, 6-1, 6-2, in the second round, then beat Marina’s Jonathan Yu and Allen Hoang, 6-3, 6-4, to advance.

Hoang and Yu recorded one of the day’s two upsets. After squeezing by Lakewood Mayfair’s Jeff Topacio and Brian Sayas, 7-6, 7-5, in the first round, Hoang and Yu rallied to upset the fourth-seeded team, El Dorado’s Michael Peng and Charles Dao, 3-6, 6-3, 6-3.

Woodbridge’s Reza Farokhpay and Tyler Call, the top-seeded team, easily advanced with a 6-3, 6-2 victory over Canyon’s Rob Sabbu and David Douglas. Second-seeded Andrew Tsu and Cody Shedd of Santa Margarita qualified with a 6-3, 6-3 victory over Garden Grove’s Brian Tran and Tuan Nguyen, and Los Alamitos’ Samir Vora and Ed Huang were the final qualifiers in doubles, defeating El Dorado’s Jason Plahy and Eric Bockhacker, 6-1, 6-2.

The other upset of the day was in singles, where Woodbridge’s Adam Artunian failed to qualify after a 6-2, 6-4 loss to Downey Warren’s Marcin Kosakowski.

Top-seeded Joost Hol, a Foothill junior, easily defeated his opponents, dropping only four games in four sets. Hol beat Long Beach Poly’s John Legacki, 6-1, 6-2.

In other regionals:

At the University of Redlands--Villa Park’s B.K. Chang and the doubles team of Chris Tibbets and Jeremy Shaw arrived Saturday at Edison High, only to discover they were at the wrong site. Tibbets and Shaw were disqualified after failing to make it to their match on time. Chang arrived in time for his singles match and reached the third round, where he lost to fourth-seeded Carl McCafferty of San Gorgonio, 6-2, 7-5.

In doubles, the second-seeded team of Scott Merryman and Michael Nguyen of Capistrano Valley qualified with a 6-2, 6-2 victory over Steve Futchico and Ivan Shaw of Upland.

Sunny Hill’s Chris Chung, the top seeded single, defeated Daniel Clemens of Claremont, 6-3, 6-4, to advance to the round of 16. Chung defeated Apple Valley’s Nitanth Vangala, 6-0, 6-0.