The season is over, and what could have been a tough transition year for the De Anza Women’s tennis team has turned out to be the most successful year for the Dons since winning the state championship in 1998. First year Coach Ron Ward led the team not only to an appearance in the state championship finals, but also to victory in the prestigious Ojai tournament in southern California, the longest running tennis tournament in the United States. When former coach Colleen Lee-Wheat decided to step down from coaching last year, the future for Women’s Tennis as De Anza was unclear.Ward was, at the time, the coach of the tennis program at Cabrillo College, and faced a transition himself, when Cabrillo decided to cut their tennis program due to budgetary constraints. “I knew him, because our teams would play each other during conference play,” Lee-Wheat said. “I went to Ron and told him to apply at De Anza. He knows his tennis. I’ve watching his kids improve greatly from one year to the next, and I always respected that.”His knowledge of tennis is not the only thing that brought success to De Anza this year. De Anza was scheduled to play against Reedley College in a quarterfinal match of the NorCal championships on Tuesday, April 20, but Head Coach Jeff McFall of Reedley feared that rain would postpone their match. Ward decided to show up anyways.”I thought it was weird, because normally we try to get the games in,” said Ward. “I told him, we’re going to be there.”After showing up at Reedley, sure enough, it began to pour. With the Ojai tournament scheduled for the upcoming weekend, the two teams decided to reschedule for the next Monday, one day after the end of Ojai.”We would have had to play them after getting back from Ojai at midnight on Sunday night,” said Ward. Ojai started on Thursday, April 22, and the plan was to go down to southern California on Tuesday, after playing Reedley. Ward said that he wanted to have a full day on Wednesday for the girls to just relax and enjoy themselves, before starting the competition on Thursday.The team was on the bus, heading down to Ojai, when Ward looked out the window and noticed something.”I saw on opening, clear blue sky,” Ward said. “I saw clouds on one side, and clouds on the other, but I would say maybe a three hour opening. I thought, hey, we might be able to get this in.” He immediately called Coach McFall and told Reedley’s Coach that they could get it in, and they should play. McFall agreed. De Anza turned their bus around, and headed back towards Reedley. They showed up with purpose.”He came over to me and said, Goddamnit, you came to play today,” Ward said. “I knew we would beat them. We were just that confident.”15 minutes after clinching the victory with five wins in the singles portion of the match, it started to pour again. They had barely gotten the game in.Back down to Ojai went the Dons, and everything worked out perfectly for Ward and the team. “It worked out perfect because we had a day on Wednesday to do nothing, and just relax,” he said. “If we didn’t get the Reedley match in, then we would have had something hanging over our heads, and would have been hard to relax. Things might have been different.”After winning Ojai, major credit goes to the coach.