By Glen Rosales
Special to the SUN

Winning a district title has been a goal that has just eluded the grasp of the Española Valley girls tennis team. Until now.

The Lady Sundevils ripped through the District 2/1A-4A tournament without losing a match, sending nemesis Robertson packing 9-0, then beating Santa Fe Prep 5-0, despite using the team’s top two singles players, seniors Gabriella Fulgenzi and Olivia Suazo, as a doubles team.

“It was a really historic weekend because we have never won a district title before,” Sundevils co-head coach Nancy Suazo said. “We’ve knocked on the door relatively frequently. We’ve been second or third in district quite a while, but we could never get past Robertson.”

But the Cardinals’ link to part of the Fulgenzi tennis dynasty went west to Española when Juan Carlos Fulgenzi was hired as Sundevils athletic director last summer, bringing daughters Gabriella and Sofia with him, as well as his wife, assistant coach Samantha Fulgenzi.

That helped turned the Española girls into a dominating force on the court, where this season, they lost just one match to six-time defending champion Albuquerque Academy.

“With JC coming in and his two daughters, that kind of flipped the script,” Nancy Suazo said. “I think it’s a huge milestone. It’s extremely important to win a district tournament in tennis because Española is not known as a tennis school. But our program and the people I have around me have worked extremely hard to raise the bar for Española tennis on the boys and girls side. It’s something we’ve been striving for.”

Now, having not only clinched a spot at the upcoming state tournament with a likely very high seed, Española, this week, will see how many Sundevils qualify for individual singles and doubles tournaments slots for the state championships that start May 5.

“Well, we’ve arrived,” Nancy Suazo said of Española. “And our name is known throughout the state, so it’s a huge milestone coming from our community, which is not traditionally a tennis community.”

While she and her assistants have been laboring to build the Sundevils program for years, having the Fulgenzis come on board bumped the timeline up significantly.

“I think it’s just coach Fulgenzi and me working together on this program and having the same goals and thoughts and forming a great coaching relationship that pushed us through into that championship and that’s what allowed us to get it,” Nancy Suazo said.