SoNo Championships
The first annual SoNo tournament was held at UCLA, hosting teams from both Northern California and Southern California to play in local, friendly matches against one another. UC San Diego sent a small team to participate in the tournament, hoping to take the crown home but unfortunately fell short.
In the first matchup, the Tritons went up against CSU Fullerton. Allen Gao and Justin Yang were sent into doubles on the men’s side while Qing Wen and Ariel Lee were playing on the women’s side. The men’s doubles prevailed in a nail-biting tiebreaker, winning the set 6-5, while the girls cruised to a smooth 6-3 victory. In singles, Brian Bliss and Qing Wen took the stage, but unfortunately both lost their sets 4-6, with Ariel Lee substituting in at 3-3 midway through the set. Kyle Vo and Celyne Moh went into the mixed set with both schools tied in games, and brought it to a tiebreaker to decide it all. Alexander Loh substituted into the match prior to the tiebreaker, but the mixed pair barely lost the tiebreaker 2-5, putting CSU Fullerton into the finals and putting UC San Diego in the consolation 3rd place match.
In the consolation final, the Tritons played the sole team from Northern California, Saint Mary’s College. The doubles pairs made another appearance, Gao and Yang, Wen and Lee, winning their sets easily 6-1 and 6-0 respectively. Alexander Loh handily won his singles set 6-0, while Celyne Moh took an enormous 4-2 lead before substituting out due to injury, with Vivian Wen finishing the match 6-3 for her. Brian Bliss and Ariel Lee went into the mixed doubles and closed it off 6-0, finishing strong for the team.
Overall the team was disappointed by their narrow first round loss, but they were still hopeful going into their second match. The players performed well in all matches throughout the day and look forward to the future iterations of the tournament.
