Coachella Valley tennis star wins another DVL title, with a Hall of Famer on his side

Coachella Valley High School tennis standout Edgar Diaz added more patches to his varsity jacket on Wednesday as the junior completed his second straight undefeated league season with a Desert Valley League title, and he did it with a little help from a tennis Hall of Famer.

Desert resident and tennis icon Rosie Casals read about Avila’s 2024 DVL title in The Desert Sun and took an interest in his career. After contacting his coach, Casals and Avila began hitting together. She was on hand Wednesday at Palm Valley Country Club to watch him in the DVL championship match.

Unfortunately, she didn’t get to see a lot of action. Diaz was leading his teammate Blas Lopez in the title match 3-0, when Lopez pulled up lame with a severe cramp. As he fell to the ground, Avila hustled over to help him get to a comfortable spot in the grass and tried to stretch his leg to quell the cramp.

After 20 minutes of treating it, the decision was made to call the match. The win for Avila, a junior, was his third consecutive DVL title. He won as a doubles player as a freshman and has been an undefeated singles player the last two years, adding two more titles.

This year’s doubles championship was also a matchup of teammates as Indio’s Gerardo Banuelos and Matthew Tejeda teamed up to beat fellow Rajahs Nicholas Aguirre and Juan Rodriguez 6-4, 7-5 to take home the DVL title.

While Avila won his singles match without much effort on Wednesday, he attributes the extra work he’s put in over the years to his recent run of success.

“I’ve put a lot of sacrifice and hard work in, almost every day I’m out there working,” Avila said, and that includes his frequent sessions with Casals at her home base of Indian Ridge Country Club whenever he gets a chance.

He said that relationship has been very helpful, and one time Billie Jean King even joined them, which was a day he said he’ll never forget.

“Rosie’s definitely helped me a lot, with technique and form and especially playing more aggressive and not being afraid to hit the ball,” Avila said. “She’s always telling me ‘Hit the ball! Hit the ball!’ because at the high levels, you never want to baby the ball, because it’s not going to work against top competitors.”

Avila defeated Indio’s Noriel Sanchez 6-0, 6-1 in the semifinal so he won 15 of the 16 games he played Wednesday on his way to the title.

The doubles competition was much more contentious.

When Banuelos and Tejeda looked across the net to see Aguirre and Rodriguez just as they have seemingly millions of times in practice, it took a little while to get into the DVL title match.

But after a few games and with the match being tight, the competitive juices returned.

“Honestly, at first it was a little weird having to play them in the final, like taking it seriously, but we got it together as it went on,” Banuelos said.

“Yeah, I was a little iffy at first and not thinking about it right and thinking it was going to go bad, but my partner and I started playing better and I got more confident,” Tejeda said.

Banuelos and Tejeda pulled out the first set 6-4, and it looked like it might go to a decisive tiebreaker as they trailed 5-4 in the second set, but they rattled off three games in a row to get the 7-5 win and end it.

The senior duo just started playing together at the start of the year, but as the year wore on, everything started to click.

“At the start, we didn’t have our chemistry together, but over the months that all came around and we started thinking that maybe we could win this,” Banuelos said. “Being seniors, it feels good to get this.”

Despite the loss, the shot of the match went to Aguirre. During the first set, he hit a return with so much backspin, it landed just over the net and then on the bounce it spun back onto his side of the net. Banuelos was in position to make a play, but he didn’t touch it as it went back over the net.

All four players sort of stood stunned as they looked around at their coaches and teammates, not sure what they just saw.

The point was correctly awarded to Aguirre and they all went back to action. Before the next point, though Aguirre said “You definitely gotta send me that clip” to a teammate who was recording the match.

DVL tennis championships

FINALS

Singles: Edgar Avila (Coachella Valley) def. Blas Lopez (CV) 3-0, ret.

Doubles: Gerardo Banuelos/Mathew Tejeda (Indio) def. Nicholas Aguirre/Juan Rodriguez (Indi) 6-4, 7-5

SEMIFINALS

Singles: Avila def. Noriel Sanchez (Indio) 6-0, 6-1; Lopez def. Andres Mendez (Indio) 6-4, 7-5

Doubles: Banuelos/Tejeda (Indio) def. Fernando Camacho/Andrew Franco (CV) 6-3, 6-4; Aguirre/Rodriguez (Indio) def. Logan Hardwood/Kevin Diaz (Yucca Valley) 6-2, 6-0

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Coachella Valley tennis star completes second straight perfect DVL year