![\"Taft's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1777523948_631_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nMake it 17 and counting.<\/p>\n
That is how many boys\u2019 tennis titles Palisades has won in a row after its 18.5 to 11 victory over Taft in the City Section Open Division championship match Wednesday afternoon at Balboa Sports Center in Encino.<\/p>\n
Freshman Kensho Ford, who reached the CIF singles semifinals at the Ojai tournament four days earlier, swept his four sets at No. 1 as expected \u2014 dropping a total of three games in the process \u2014 but what co-coaches Robert Silvers and Bud Kling did not anticipate was Zach Cohen sweeping at No. 4 to give the top-seeded Dolphins a split of the 16 possible singles points.<\/p>\n
Cohen played No. 1 doubles with Zach Stuffman all season but was itching to play singles for the playoffs and wound up winning all six of his sets including two before being subbed out for the last two rotations in Monday\u2019s semifinal rout of fourth-seeded Marshall.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been asking for two years now and when Coach Rob told me Saturday I\u2019d be in singles I was so excited,\u201d said Cohen, who was also the Division I individual champion while pacing the Dolphins to their fifth straight cross-country team title in November at Elysian Park.<\/p>\n
Five is nice, but 17 straight is a dynasty unparalleled in City Section history. No team in any sport from a City school has ever produced a longer streak and no coach has more City crowns than Kling\u2019s 55 (33 boys, 22 girls). Palisades has also appeared in 21 straight finals. The last time two other schools met for the City\u2019s upper division title was 2004 when El Camino Real defeated West Valley League rival Granada Hills.<\/p>\n
Palisades got another surprise when the sophomore tandem of Josh Glaser and Bennett Murphy, who were bumped up to varsity a month earlier, won all three of ithebsets at No. 3 doubles, beating the Toreadors\u2019 top two duos in tiebreakers.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Taft\u2019s Dannes Djalilov won two sets at No. 1 singles during Wednesday\u2019s City Section Open Division tennis final. <\/p>\n
(Steve Galluzzo \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n
Danees Djalilov took two of his four sets at No. 1 singles and Brandon Celestine did the same at No. 4 for the second-seeded Toreadors, who were the last team to defeat Palisades in the finals \u2014 doing so in 2007 and 2008 led by two-time City individual singles winner Josh Tchan.<\/p>\n
Moments after Ford finished off his 6-0 victory over Alec Volodarskiy to move his team within half a point of the championship, Stuffman and new partner Jack Plotkowski put the Dolphins over the 15-point threshold by completing a sweep at No. 1 doubles with a 6-2 ousting of Taft\u2019s No. 2 team.<\/p>\n
Taft was seeking its eighth City title and first since winning Division II in 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Make it 17 and counting. That is how many boys\u2019 tennis titles Palisades has won in a row…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":637847,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[238246,49,48,238245,238247,24525,43048,238248,238241,9009,21849,82,238242,2341,593,238249,18565,238243,238244],"class_list":["post-637846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-bud-kling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-city-school","tag-coach-rob","tag-division","tag-dolphin","tag-many-boy","tag-palisades-boy","tag-set","tag-single","tag-sports","tag-taft","tag-team","tag-tennis","tag-toreadors","tag-victory","tag-zach-cohen","tag-zach-stuffman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/637847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}