Palisades Whips Taft for Fifth Consecutive City 4-A Tennis Title

Palisades High won the City Section 4-A girls’ tennis title Tuesday. As surprises go, that ranks right up there with the sunrise and Republican presidential victories.

The Dolphins dispatched Taft, 6-1, at the Racquet Centre in Studio City to win their 5th consecutive team title and 9th in the last 11 years.

“What it really boils down to is that we were the underdogs coming in,” Taft Coach Marvin Jones said. “We played a good match but it wasn’t good enough.”

Palisades (18-0) was led by No. 1 singles player Heather Willens, the second-ranked junior player in Southern California. Willens, a senior who is being recruited by Cal and Stanford, defeated Julie Koppekin, 6-2, 6-0.

In all, Palisades won 3 of the 4 singles matches and swept the 3 doubles matches.

“I guess we come in expecting to win,” Willens said. “There were a lot of tough matches, but we have the confidence to know to hang together and that we’ll win.”

The lone match the Toreadors (16-1) won Tuesday was the No. 3 singles, in which Jenny Poresler defeated Torrey Miller, 6-4, 7-5.

The championship is the 10th for Palisades, according to City Section records which date to 1975. Only 2 teams other than Palisades have won the title: Granada Hills defeated Palisades in 1982 and 1983 and Taft won successive championships in 1976 and 1977.

“We played lots of deuces, lots of tiebreakers and we split sets,” Jones said. “If you look at the final score, it looks one-sided, but we were in it. Palisades always has a good team. I just hope the well runs dry soon.”

Gardena defeated Eagle Rock, 5-2, to capture the 3-A championship.