Harrison and Lenaway reach fourth round of CIF tournament

Fallbrook High School seniors Declan Harrison and Riley Lenaway became the first Warriors boys tennis players this century to reach the fourth round of the CIF tournament.

Harrison and Lenaway won their first three matches of the May 15-19 tournament at the Barnes Tennis Center in San Diego before losing to the fourth-seeded Scripps Ranch doubles team.

"They had a different strategy in every match they played," said Fallbrook coach Bill Lenaway. "I thought they did a really good job of adapting."

The tournament consisted of 64 singles players and 64 doubles teams. The top four singles players and top four doubles tandems received specific seeds, the next four seeds were given unspecified 5-8 seeds, and the unspecified 9-16 seeds also had first-day byes and played the survivors from the first two rounds. Four other singles players and four additional doubles teams were given unspecified 17-20 seeds but not first-day byes.

Harrison and Riley Lenaway had a 17-20 seed and began the tournament with two May 16 matches. The first was a 6-0, 6-1 victory over Justin Moran and Elijah Tubbs from Tri-City Christian. Harrison and Lenaway then won a pair of 7-5 sets against the Canyon Crest tandem of senior Nathan Parikh and junior Max Tokman.

The feed-in match was against La Jolla Country Day juniors Ben Gollin and Spencer Camp, who had a 9-16 seed. Gollin and Camp prevailed 6-3 in the first set. In the second set, Harrison and Lenaway won five of the first seven games, and with a 40-30 advantage in the eighth game, Lenaway handled a shot at the net and deposited the ball on the front side across the net and out of reach of the Torres' players. The 6-2 win in the second set forced a tiebreaking game to 10 points. Harrison and Lenaway had leads of 3-1, 5-2, 7-3, and 8-4 before a return out of bounds gave the Warriors' players a 10-5 victory and made them the winners of the match.

"That was just solid, solid execution," said Lenaway. "We set a plan and we stuck to it."

"We were just capitalizing off of strategy," Harrison said.

"They had to have a plan," said Bill Lenaway. "In the first set they were executing the plan 70, 75 percent of the time. In the second set they executed about 90 percent of the time. It was nice to see them adapt."

Scripps Ranch seniors Avi Ganti and Ryan Ghassemi won the Western League tournament. They won the first three games of their first set against Harrison and Lenaway as well as the final two games of that 6-2 set, and they advanced to the quarterfinals with a 6-0 triumph over their Fallbrook counterparts in the second set.

"We played the best we could," Harrison said.

Ganti and Ghassemi eventually reached the tournament semifinals. Ghassemi noted that the play of Harrison and Lenaway didn't necessarily reflect the score. "They did fantastic," Ghassemi said.

"We couldn't have lost to nicer kids," Lenaway said.

"Not disappointed in the way they played," Bill Lenaway said. "They got beat by a team that's just better than they are."

Bill Lenaway took over as Fallbrook's boys head coach in 2009 and was also the Warriors' varsity assistant coach under Andy DeSouza in 2008. DeSouza was also Fallbrook's coach in 2007, and Dennis Houlihan coached the Warriors from 2000 to 2006.

"They've done better than any team I know," Bill Lenaway said of Harrison and Riley Lenaway.

Harrison and Riley Lenaway reached the third round of the CIF tournament last year before losing to Torrey Pines opponents who were seeded second. One other Fallbrook doubles team this century reached the third round of the CIF tournament; Tyler Ocheltree and Ryder Rogers won their first two matches in the 2012 tournament.

"We're getting further every year," Riley Lenaway said.

Lenaway played singles in 2015 and reached the second round of the CIF tournament.

"I did not think that was going to happen," Harrison said of reaching the fourth round.

Lenaway noted that Harrison contributed to the success of the Fallbrook doubles team. "It would not have been possible without him," Lenaway said.

"I couldn't be any more proud of these guys," Bill Lenaway said. "They understand the perspective of the game, played hard."

Harrison was a three-sport athlete at Fallbrook High School and was also on the Warriors' water polo and swim teams. He will be attending the U.S. Naval Academy and intends to try out for Navy's aquatics teams.

"I probably won't pick up a racquet for a while," said Harrison.

Riley Lenaway will be majoring in civil engineering at UCLA and will seek a berth on the Bruins' club tennis team rather than on the National Collegiate Athletic Association squad.

Fallbrook junior Brett Johnson participated in the singles portion of the CIF tournament, although that was limited to his first-round match May 15 which was a 6-0, 6-2 loss to Grossmont's Kent Abbott.