Tracy High and West High tennis teams faced off against each other Thursday at Tracy High’s tennis courts in the first pre-league match of the season.

Tracy finished on top with a 3-2 win, taking two of three singles matches and one of the two doubles matches. They’ll get another idea of how their players are shaping up when the teams go to West High on Tuesday for another matchup.

Both teams start off their year looking to fill spots in their respective ladders, which determine the top singles and doubles players going into team matches. Their strengths last year were in seniors, but coaches from both teams say they have enough returning players to provide a solid core to each team.

Tracy’s top three singles as of the first week were Zuhaib Farooqui, a transfer student; senior Christophe Pope; and junior Niraj Punjya.

“They’re going to be a real solid top three players,” Tracy coach Patrick O’Brien said. “It’s going to be interesting to see where we fall, because there’s been a lot of changes in the league. Even though we lost our No. 1 player and other seniors, other teams did the same thing.”

This year, West has returning players taking on top roles, including junior Martin Delgadillo and seniors Japnam Singh and Jehanzeb Arif in the top three singles spots. West also has a new coach in Christine Toon, who has coached volleyball and got into tennis this year so she could stay active as a coach through the spring.

The Wolf Pack got as far as the first round of the Sac-Joaquin Section playoffs last year as a team and also sent a doubles team, Daniel Delgadillo and Parker Lewis, to the individual section tournament.

As for Thursday’s matches, the No. 1 singles match turned out to be a hard-fought contest between West’s Delgadillo and Tracy’s Farooqui, who went to a tiebreaker in their first set before Delgadillo took the second set, winning the match 7-6, 6-3.

The other two singles matches went to Tracy, with Pope beating Singh, 6-1, 6-1, and Punjya beating Arif, 6-2, 6-2.

The teams split the doubles matches, as Tracy’s Anthony Klassen and Jon Salud beat West’s Michael Melech and Bas Schaap, 5-7, 7-5, 8-6, on a tiebreaker. West took the other, with Alhishek Hegde and Shams Dadges beating Laqshya Teneja and Himanshu Arora, 6-4, 3-6, 6-2.

In exhibition matches, West’s Trevor Lewis and Manjap Singh beat Tracy’s Cameron Pope and Tommy Langley, 6-1, 6-3. Tracy’s Pope and Danville Cameglia and West’s Sam Abusneineh and Calvin Ly split their sets, with the West duo taking the first, 6-3, and Tracy the second, 6-2.

• Contact Bob Brownne at 830-4227 or brownne@tracypress.com.