Even in what could be described as a rebuilding year following a senior-led team, the 2024 Palm Desert High girls’ tennis team always shows that championship mettle.
The Aztecs turned back a feisty Xavier Prep team Thursday to complete a perfect run through Desert Empire League play and secure another league title.
The final score was 11-7 as the Queens of Cook Street mantle for girls’ tennis stayed firmly with the Aztecs.
“We lost a lot of seniors last year and key players, but we’re still doing well and it’s been a good year, undefeated in league and Queens of Cook Street after this one,” said Palm Desert junior Peyton Ellis, the team’s No. 2 singles player who won all three of her sets Thursday. “The whole team is playing well and learning and getting better every time out. We’re rebuilding but still finding ways to win.”
Along with Ellis, the Aztecs’ No. 1 singles player Allison Smith also swept her sets in this one as Palm Desert grabbed seven of the nine possible singles points with Sydney Presser winning one set. Xavier Prep’s Hailey Goldstein and Ava Samuels each one once.
The match of the night was an epic battle at No. 2 doubles between the Aztecs’ unbeaten duo of sisters Victoria and Vanessa Vorwald and the Saints’ Daisy Armstrong and Caroline Marcel. In a set that lasted an hour and a half, the Saints’ duo emerged with the upset, grabbing a 7-6 win, including a 9-7 victory in the tiebreaker, to hand the talented Palm Desert duo their first loss of the season.
The Vorwalds rebounded to win their second-round set and that was the one that gave the Aztecs their 10th point to clinch the match.
The depth of the Aztecs won out on this night as Palm Desert showed its supremacy on the courts, continuing a streak of Desert Empire League excellence.
“We have been playing hard from singles through doubles and put in a lot of work in the offseason,” said Smith, the Aztecs’ top player. “And we’ve grown from that extra work. We’re a deep team and we’ll see what happens in CIF-SS. It’s a new system this year, so we don’t know what division or things like that, so we’ll have to see.”
Smith is right. Usually, the league champion is rewarded with a home playoff match, but that is no longer the case as tennis, like every sport, is now part of a system where your division and home-vs.-road fate is decided on the day the brackets come out. The brackets for the CIF-SS playoffs come out Nov. 4.
Before the CIF-SS team tennis playoffs which will include both the Aztecs and the second-place Saints, both teams will compete in the Desert Empire League individual tournament on Tuesday and Thursday at a location still to be determined.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Palm Desert tennis beats Xavier Prep to win another DEL title
