Although only four players have been added to the roster, this is a season of change for the Los Altos High boys tennis team. The Eagles are playing under a new coach and in a different division.
Hung Nguyen – Los Altos’ longtime varsity girls coach and frosh-soph boys coach – takes over for Thor Holt, who moved out of state. Nguyen inherits a team that has been promoted to the SCVAL De Anza Division after going undefeated in the El Camino Division last spring.
“I’m excited,” Nguyen said. “The boys team is really good. They’re really talented.”
Teeming with so much talent that Nguyen routinely has to come up with new ways to challenge his players in practice.
“They are so skilled that I have to create different drills than I’ve used with my other teams,” he said. “If it’s too easy, they lose focus. But that’s a good problem.”
That skill runs deep; Nguyen said the Eagles “have strength in numbers” and that most of his players are versatile enough to compete in singles and doubles.
“We’re 12 deep,” the coach said, “and the majority of them have multiple skills.”
It’s a young group as well, with only three seniors among the top 10 players. The singles lineup features Jayanth Mallampati at No. 1, fellow sophomore Rohan Panchal at No. 2, freshman Naveen Mukherjee at No. 3 and senior Akshaan Ahuja at the fourth spot. The doubles lineup is heavy on underclassmen; there are only two seniors among the three teams.
Mallampati and Panchal, along with all the doubles, were unbeaten prior to the challenging Bay Area Tennis Classic, at which the Eagles placed ninth out of 16 teams Saturday. Los Altos went 3-1 at the two-day tournament, raising its overall record to 5-2.
The 6-foot-2 Mallampati – who also played No. 1 singles as a freshman – “has power and finesse,” according to Nguyen, while the smaller Panchal “is cat-like quick” and “can chase down almost anything.”
Mukherjee, the team’s lone freshman, “is very talented,” the coach said, while co-captain Ahuja “is the heart of the team.”
Junior Ashwin Mukherjee and sophomore Rohin Bhagat make up the top doubles team. Nguyen expects them to be one of the best duos in the league.
“They work together really well,” the coach said. “They will be hard to beat.”
As will the No. 2 team of co-captain Lleyton Brouwer and fellow senior Alec Van Kerckhove, according to Nguyen.
“They’re going to be strong,” he said. “Alec doesn’t lose many matches and Lleyton is a gamer – he shines in the moment.”
Sophomores Daniel Sagatelian and Dan Bita – “both accomplished singles players,” Nguyen noted – play together at No. 3.
While the coach said his top two singles players “on any given day can beat anybody,” the Eagles’ success may come down to how well their doubles teams perform in the De Anza Division.
“It’s one of the toughest leagues in Northern California, and it’s top heavy,” Nguyen said. “Singles could have a tougher time in this league, so doubles will probably be the glue.”
After cruising through the El Camino last season, Los Altos qualified for the Central Coast Section playoffs and reached the quarterfinals as an unseeded team. The Eagles should get a more favorable seed this year – strength of schedule is a key component to determining that – but Nguyen isn’t convinced that will make the road to the finals any easier for his team.
“To me, the goal is the semifinals of CCS, but that’s a really hard goal,” he said. “Realistically, it’s the quarterfinals.”
Los Altos, entering the week at 1-1 in the De Anza, hosts Gunn
4 p.m. Thursday in league play.
