The Mesa College women’s tennis team took on Grossmont College on March 12 at Mesa, falling to the No.10 ranked Griffins 9-0.

The Olympians were dealing with a bit of turmoil that came up the day before. Their top ranked player, Karina Ortiz, was ruled ineligible for academic reasons causing Head Coach Patty Peisner to shuffle her players.

“It bumped our number one out and messed up our doubles completely,” Peisner said.

With players having to raise their game a level because of the eligibility issue, Peisner was pleased with the effort that her team gave.

“After the last time we played Grossmont, we really thought we had a chance today. But with the issues, just for people to give their best and have competitive matches is what we were hoping for today,” Peisner said.

Grossmont took advantage of Mesa’s misfortune taking all three doubles matches to start off with and never letting up during the singles. At points it seemed as if the Griffins were bored with the match, numerous times having to be reprimanded by their head coach.

“It’s just a matter of kids understanding that you can’t drop something until you have something. We haven’t had any issues all year so I didn’t even check the eligibility roster until after practice Monday, but no one feels worse about this than Katrina,” Peisner said.

“With this group of kids, they all want to win, but I think they liked the opportunity to play up in singles, but doubles, that was just confusing, and it would be. And it’s good practice for us,” Peisner said.

The singles players for Mesa included Bronte Hopkins, Erika Castro, Katie Fowler, Layla Zbinden, MaryBel Chu and Vanessa Duenas. The doubles teams consisted of Hopkins/Castro, Fowler/Zbinden and Chu/Duenas.

Mesa women’s tennis plays at home on March 19 against Cuyamaca College.