Tennis ’25 CIF finals.(Photo Cortesy of Mekayla Landers)

The AGHS Boys Varsity Tennis team had a very successful season. Lucas Lehman (‘25) and Lance Willkomm (‘25) were two of the only players from the Central Coast to make it past league and into CIF, reaching second place overall.

“They have good morals, great attitudes, and they’re very motivated players with phenomenal technique,” tennis coach Mekayla Landers said.

The teams compete in seeds consisting of pairs. The pairs are arranged in a 1-16 person draw to determine the seeds which are ranked based on the Universal Tennis Ratings of the players.  Lehman and Willkomm were originally supposed to be within the 8th seed and ended up being placed in the 7th seed due to changes in some rankings.

“They definitely rose to the occasion in the last couple weeks of training,” Landers said. “They worked really hard on focusing on what can we do to step up and compete against those players.”

Lehman and Willkomm began playing Tennis in their freshman year. As seniors, Lehman and Willkom were the team captains and stepped into the roles, showing the younger players what it meant to train, work hard, and get themselves out of tough situations.

“I was feeling pretty good starting out the last match because we had won the 3 previous matches,” Lehman said. “We kind of went into it planning to just play tennis and have some fun since we were playing the number 1 seed. We lost the first set, then scraped out the second set. The third set started off good, and then we started making some mistakes and ended up losing the set, ending [in] 2nd place in CIF.”

Lehman and Willkomm both have different paths to success on the court, with improvising or strategizing for the best chance at success. Through the season Lehman and Willkomm have shown their perseverance and strengths in tennis.

Making it into CIF Division I and into the final match was a huge accomplishment as Willkomm had only made it into the quarter finals in Division II the previous two years. 

“Then in the finals, they really stepped up against a team that had just recently won CIF,” Landers said.“They definitely showed what it means to be an Eagle and the fact that working hard can pay off.”