De Anza College’s men’s and women’s tennis teams finished their seasons with flying colors, sending eight players to the state tournament.

Both teams persevered through a tough season to send six singles players and four doubles teams to states.

Players who made it to the state tournament include Kim Do, Than Lien, Hatif Sayhad and Leonard Ting on the men’s team and Polina Gorshenina, Jaklyn Lee, Van Nguyen and Stephanie Wei on the women’s team. Gorshenina and Nguyen even made it to the women’s doubles final, losing only one match all year at the state final.

Making it to the state tournament was not easy. Players had to make sacrifices throughout the season.

“It was a little bit of a juggling act,” he said. “Schoolwork was difficult to keep up with just because of the time spent on the court training.”

The extensive training left the team feeling drained, but players worked hard through practice after practice in order to hone themselves into quality players.

“It was really, really hard having to practice every day,” Do said. “Your muscles are sore when you go home and you just want to sleep, but then you have to study.”

Despite countless hours of draining practices, players still took it upon themselves to put in extra effort outside of team practice.

“Sometimes we practiced on Saturdays and Sundays, but our own practice, not an official team practice,” Do said.

While all the tennis players had to find time to balance school and practice, others had to find even more time, and make even more sacrifices.

“Managing your time is important because you need to know when to go to classes, when to go to tennis practice, when to do your homework and also I work so I have to find time for that,” Gorshenina said. “I sacrificed some of my classes, I had to take less units than I planned on.”

On top of the tiring balancing act that the tennis players had to endure, many sustained injuries and decided to endure through the season in-spite of these injuries.

“I was going to a lot of chiropractors because my back was hurting, and by the end of the season everyone was injured, either shoulder problems or back problems,” Gorshenina said. “Everyone was pretty tired from it.”
Through all the hardships of the season, players pulled through and remained united.