Legionnaires denied league tennis championship by tiebreaker

Bonsall High School and Horizon Prep both posted 5-1 league records in Patriot League tennis play, and the two teams split their matches against each other. The tie breaking criteria for the league championship if two teams have identical league and head-to-head records is sets won in head-to-head competition, and Horizon Prep had the better statistic in that tiebreaker to give the Lions the league championship.

"It is what it is. Wins are great but, especially in this year, just seeing the kids out there laughing and smiling and having conversations with their opponents was just really heartening to see," said Eric Hendy, who took over as Bonsall's tennis coach for the final two matches.

Mark Roback started the season as Bonsall's coach. Roback had been a Navy dentist before retiring from the Navy after 31 years in April. Roback and his wife put their Fallbrook house on the market and it sold faster than expected, so they left for South Carolina with a week remaining in the season as did their two sons who had been on the Legionnaires' tennis team. Roback's final day with the Bonsall program was April 29.

"I'm very proud of how they performed," Roback said.

Roback noted that the team had 12 players before his sons departed for South Carolina; five of those were on last year's team while seven were new to tennis. "They did a phenomenal job," he said. "It was amazing to watch the growth throughout the year and how they performed."

Including Roback's sons, the Legionnaires had eight boys and four girls on this year's team. Normally girls tennis is a fall sport and boys tennis is a spring sport, but the coronavirus shutdown delayed the start of 2020-21 CIF competition so boys and girls tennis were combined including formal mixed doubles sets for the first time in San Diego Section history.

This season's format consisted of three boys singles sets, three girls singles sets, three boys doubles sets, three girls doubles sets, and five mixed doubles sets. A boy or girl is limited to two sets in a match, so a school must have at least seven boys and seven girls to avoid forfeiting any sets.

This year the Patriot League included High Tech High North County and Southern California Yeshiva as well as Bonsall and Horizon Prep. Including non-league matches, Bonsall had four matches against Horizon Prep with each team winning two of those. Bonsall also had two non-league matches against High Tech High North County and defeated the Raptors all four times. Bonsall defeated Southern California Yeshiva twice.

Including the matches which did not count in the league standings, the Legionnaires were 7-2 against Patriot League opponents. Bonsall's overall record was 7-3; Roback's final game as Bonsall's coach April 29 was at El Camino and the Wildcats won that non-league match.

"It was a good season," Hendy said. "Our tennis team has struggled to get enough players, and to be one of the few teams to garner enough especially in this year was a nice blessing."