Trojans capture second straight title

If you happen to be looking for the coach of the most successful team at Orland High School, just look for the guy who is soaking wet and covered in silly string.

The Orland Trojan tennis team, shortly after winning their second straight Northern Section Division 2 championship, gave coach George Valentin the traditional Gatorade victory bath and then covered him from head to toe with an all-out assault of silly string.

The host Trojans finished the season with a 15-1 overall record while going undefeated in league play for the second straight year. Orland also defeated a Willows team that went 15-3 on the season and easily won the Sacramento Valley League championship.

The two teams never reached doubles play Wednesday as Orland decided the match in singles. However the members of the two teams had a long wait to see if doubles would be necessary, gathered around the match of Orland’s Phelipe Pereira and Willows’ Vadym Samoylov.

The two No. 3 seeds split the first two sets with Pereira easily winning the first set 6-0 and then dropping the second to Samoylov 6-1.

In the third set, Pereira went ahead 5-3, but lost the next three games to fall behind 6-5. In the final game, the duo had several monster rallies that included as many as 20 shots by each player. Pereira finally put Samoylov away with a couple of smashes at the net, sending the match into a tiebreaker.

Samoylov grabbed a 4-1 lead in the tiebreaker, but Pereira fought back to tie it at 4-4. Samoylov then got to match point at 6-4, but Pereira won the final four points to collect the third set tiebreaker 8-6.

The Honkers and Trojans split the top two singles matches, but Orland’s depth won out at the bottom half of the ladder.

Willows’ Yang Xiong, the SVL singles champion, dispatched with Orland’s Cody Wackerman in the No. 1 spot 6-2, 6-3, but Orland’s Josh Olivarez, the BVL champion, downed Brandon Boyd 6-2, 6-1 in the second spot.

Olivarez’s win was yet another in an incredible season for the Trojan senior who had never picked up a racket prior to last September.

“I never even really knew Orland had a tennis team,” said Olivarez, who played the sport in P.E. one day.

From that first swing of the racket, however, he was hooked.

“Now I practice about four hours a day and I play in tournaments on the weekends.”

The constant play has taken Olivarez from an inexperienced player to the top of the Butte View League in a short nine months. The only road block along the way was a brief period during the beginning of the season when he had an injured shoulder and had to play lefthanded.

“He had his right arm in a sling and he was playing left handed,” said Orland assistant coach Adam Reimers, “and he was winning.”

Olivarez says the left-handed style helped improve his game.

“It really helped me develop my backhand.”

With the match tied at 1-1 and the top two seeds off the court, the remaining four seeds were left to determine the Division 2 championship. Cody Johns, the team’s No. 4 seed, was the next off the court, giving Orland a 6-2, 6-2 win over Willows’ Awaaz Patel. Then came Caneane Salinthone at No. 6 with a 6-4, 6-2 win over Walter Michael.

Reily Dingus, the Trojans’ No. 5 seed who reached the league semifinals last week, battled back from an early deficit in the second set against Leng Lee to win 6-4, 6-4.

That left it up to Pereira and Samoylov to determine the need for three more doubles matches.

The Trojans advanced to the section finals with an 8-1 win over Mercy on Tuesday. Orland won five of the six singles matches and swept the doubles matches in collecting their 14th win of the season.

Olivarez and Johns won by identical 6-1, 6-1 scores while Pereira defeated Kevin Thibert 6-3, 6-0. Caneane Salinthone and Reily Dingus, who finished second at the league doubles tournament last weekend, had the best day in doubles with a 6-2, 6-0 win.

Willows, meanwhile, swept the six singles matches to top Sutter 8-1 in the other semifinal match on Tuesday in Willows. The Honkers got straight set wins from all six seeds including a 6-1, 6-2 win by Xiong over Sutter’s Jason Ward. Leng Lee also had a decisive win, beating Todd Robison 6-0, 6-3 at the No. 5 doubles match.