In 2022, Maranatha and Geffen Academy/UCLA were the Coastal League co-champions.

In 2023 and 2024, Geffen won the league title handily.

This season, they won their 3rd straight without being challenged.

In fact, they haven’t lost a league match since the last time Maranatha beat them in 2022.

In their first meeting of 2025, the Bruins overwhelmed the Minutemen, 14-1, before the match was called due to darkness after an hour rain delay.

The Bruins won 8 sets by the score of 6-0 and 2 sets, 6-1.

That was exactly one month ago.

Since that drubbing, the Minutemen have worked hard, in hopes of securing a berth in the CIF-SS playoffs, after missing out last season for the first time in modern history.

Coming into today’s match, they have gone 7-2, with the two losses being 10-8 and 9-9 heartbreakers that came down to the final set.

In that stretch, the Minutemen achieved their goal and secured a second-place finish in league, after finishing 5th last season.

They will now be heading back to the playoffs.

Today’s match against Geffen was more evidence of how far they have come, as they provided a real challenge to the Bruins.

It was a much closer match than the score indicates.

No.1 doubles Matt Yip/Reggie Park and #2 Nate Schumann/Russell Sze each won two sets in a display of dazzling tennis, going 6-2, 6-1 and 7-5, 6-4 respectively.

Schumann/Sze came close to sweeping, losing one set, 7-6(2).

The Minutemen lost four other sets, 7-5, and one, 6-4, displaying grit, heart, and fight.

They might have won one or two more sets, had not their top player, Cherif Sauma, suffered an injury early on that slowed him down significantly in the 2nd set and kept him out of the 3rd.

Today also was the regular season finale in the careers of captains Matt Yip and Will Klop.

This was Klop’s second year on the team, his first as a regular starter.

Yip is a four-year starter and the only player on the team with playoff experience, as 12 of the 13 players on the team joined either last year or this year.

Both players have provided valuable leadership and maturity to the young Minutemen squad, and will be counted on as they enter the playoffs in two weeks.

CIF-SS is in the first year of a new competitive equity playoff system that aims to bring more parity to the playoffs.

Whereas in the past, when a team knew what division it was in before the season began (based on an algorithm based on the previous years’ data), going forward, teams will not know their division placement until after the regular season concludes.

What is certain is that Geffen will be placed a few divisions higher than the Minutemen.

Placement is revealed on May 5, 2025.