With Youth Being Served, Westlake Rides High Again

Nina Yaftali, Audra Dickey and Amy Corwin may be high school freshmen, but when it comes to tennis, they are seasoned veterans.

And benefiting from their extensive U.S. Tennis Assn. tournament experience is undefeated Westlake High.

The Warriors are 10-0, 5-0 in Marmonte League play, and thanks largely to the young trio, appear to have rebounded nicely from a fourth-place league finish in 1997 when they missed the playoffs for the first time in the school’s 20-year history.

“There’s been some great kids and some great players here over the years,” Coach Connie Flanderka said. “This is just more of them. It’s a continuation of that, and we’re fortunate.”

Yaftali and Dickey each are 24-6 in sets. Corwin has a 21-9 record.

Yaftali has stepped into the No. 1 singles slot. She is currently ranked 13th in the USTA Southern California girls’ 14 singles ratings after being ranked 44th last year.

Dickey, ranked 22nd in girls 14s after being 98th last year, transferred to Westlake this fall and is the Warriors’ No. 2 player after spending seventh and eighth grades at La Reina, an all-girls’ parochial school in Thousand Oaks.

Yaftali and Dickey competed in the girls’ 14 portion of the U.S. national hardcourt championships in Georgia and the Southern California junior sectional tournament over the summer, and Yaftali advanced to the semifinal round at the Ojai tournament in April.

Corwin, the Warriors’ No. 3 player, is not among the top 60 players in girls’ 14. But she plays USTA tournaments regularly and finished last year ranked 136th.

“We have a lot of depth now, in singles and doubles, and I think we can get deep into CIF,” Yaftali said. “I thought we were going to be good, and we’ve done really well so far.”

*

Nancy Garrison, a veteran of the USTA senior women’s tennis circuit, is taking over a young set for the first time and loving it.

Garrison, who teamed with Lee Gummeson to win a women’s 35 doubles tournament at Westlake Tennis and Swim Club last week, has coached the Cal Lutheran women’s tennis team for the past five years and worked with elite players on USTA national traveling teams in the past.

But she is in her first season as the girls’ coach at Newbury Park High, and both she and the Panthers are appreciating the change.

“The coaching is so rewarding,” Garrison said. “I’ve worked with players on the higher levels, but to me, it’s like, they’ve been there, done that, and I can’t teach them anything. Here, you can see the kids grow. You see them develop.”

Led by singles players Cara Diener, Aimee Fiore and Jessica Thompson, and the No. 1 doubles team of Kamala Kiffe and Erin Zuckman, Newbury Park (5-6, 1-4) last week posted its first league victory--a 16-2 decision over first-year program Moorpark.

As part of her preparation for the the women’s 40 competition at the U.S. national hardcourt championships in La Jolla in December, Garrison played in the Senior Women’s Classic that ends today at the Burbank Tennis Center. Garrison and partner Mindy Oki won the women’s 35 and women’s 40 doubles divisions of the tournament last year.