Marina doubles team repeat bid ends in CIF Individuals boys' tennis semifinals
The Vikings advanced to their first CIF championship match in program history.
Individually, Nguyen and Tran were not quite able to repeat as the best doubles team in the CIF Southern Section.
They lost to the top-seeded JSerra duo of Brady Schaefgen and Riley Anson, 6-3, 7-5, in the semifinals of the CIF Individuals tournament on Thursday morning at Biszantz Family Tennis Center in Claremont.
'I think we all played well this year, us and our team,' Tran said. 'We came really close. The Ojai final, that could have gone either way, and also the team final. We all played really well, got really close. We just wish we could have pulled it through, winning.'
Nguyen, the powerful left-hander, exits as possibly the most accomplished tennis player in school history, coach Chuck Kingman said, at least on par with 2023 graduate Mika Ikemori on the girls' side. Nguyen is attending UC San Diego next year and hopes to walk on to the men's tennis team there.
Nguyen and Tran, the Sunset League champions, started well against Trinity League champions Schaefgen and Anson. The defending CIF doubles champions from Marina quickly earned a 3-0 lead in the first set.
But the JSerra tandem ran off six straight games to capture the set.
'We started slow, but they were also playing unbelievable for the first three games,' Anson said. 'Everything was working. After 0-3, I think we just slowed our game down a little bit, made the right shots. Didn't go for anything flashy, just played basic doubles and played the right high-percentage shots.
'I played Trevor previously, and I know he's a monster at the net. The plan was just to try to keep it away from him, extend the points and try to have us attack the net and finish.'
The second set stayed on serve until the very end. Serving to stay in the match at 4-5, Tran held in a game that went to three deuces. Schaefgen then quickly held serve at love himself, putting the pressure back on Marina.
Nguyen went up 30-love on his serve, but JSerra rallied to capture the game and the match. A good return by Anson on match point forced Nguyen's subsequent shot long.
JSerra's duo had its serve broken just once all match.
'Credit to our guys, they hung in there and didn't get disillusioned and batted,' Kingman said. 'And all credit to Riley and his partner, they played really well from the third game on. They never had any lapses. Our guys never really got a look at anything. They served well, they returned well, our guys just never quite got a look.'
Nguyen and Tran got to the CIF semifinals with a pair of wins Wednesday, beating a team from University in the round of 16 and a team from Palos Verdes in the quarterfinals.
In two years together as a doubles team, they advanced to at least the semifinals twice at both the prestigious Ojai Tournament and the CIF Individuals tournament.
'I'm really proud of what we've achieved over my career,' Nguyen said. 'I'm sad that this is my last chance. We came so close. We got to the finals of Ojai, the [team] finals of CIF and the semifinals of this tournament. It's just kind of sad that we couldn't pull it through with all of those chances.'
Edison's Dylan Trinh and Kai Stolaruk were the other local players to advance to the final stages of the tournament. Trinh and Stolaruk, the Sunset League runners up, fell to Langston Walter-Wu and Humam Alajeely of University 6-4, 6-4 in the round of 16.
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