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Los Angeles Times
6 days ago
- Sport
- Los Angeles Times
Marina doubles team repeat bid ends in CIF Individuals boys' tennis semifinals
CLAREMONT — Marina High senior Trevor Nguyen and junior David Tran helped orchestrate a historic season for the boys' tennis team. 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.
Los Angeles Times
27-04-2025
- Sport
- Los Angeles Times
Marina doubles team settles for runner-up finish at Ojai Tennis Tournament
OJAI — Trevor Nguyen and David Tran came extremely close to earning another significant tournament victory on Saturday afternoon. It can't get much closer than a third-set tiebreaker. The Marina High boys' tennis tandem was a few points away from winning the Ojai Tennis Tournament title, dazzling the crowd at Libbey Park with their play at times. In the end, Beckman senior Caden Lee showed he could go back to back. Lee won his second straight CIF doubles division title at the prestigious tournament, teaming with freshman Edwin Yuan for a 4-6, 6-4, 7-6 (7-5) victory over Nguyen and Tran. 'It feels great,' Lee said. 'The first two years, I played singles, and I only got to the second round once and the first round the second time. Going all the way with two different partners, it just feels really good.' Nguyen, a senior, and Tran, a junior, were last year's CIF Southern Section Individuals doubles champions for Marina and top-seeded this year at Ojai. They made it into the championship match without dropping a set. 'It would have been nice to win it my senior year, but they played well,' Nguyen said. 'In the third set, it was just anyone's game, whoever executed better on the returns. That was probably the biggest factor.' Despite the loss, Nguyen and Tran became the first boys' tennis players from a Huntington Beach Union High School District school to ever make a title match at the Ojai tournament. Last year, they fell in the semifinals. They looked good early Saturday in the title match, racing to a 4-0 lead in the first set against the No. 2-seeded Beckman duo, which closed within 5-4. Nguyen was successfully able to serve for the set, recording a service winner at deuce before an outright ace. Lee, an Air Force commit who won Ojai doubles with his younger brother Tyler last year, came back strong in the second set with Yuan. They took a 4-1 lead, though this time Marina battled back to 4-4. Tran's serve was broken at 4-5, however, as the match went to a decisive third set. 'Both teams played really well at times, and were off at times,' Marina coach Chuck Kingman said. 'Just a lot of swings of momentum. A couple of points either way, but they played really well. It's not like we gave it to them. They earned the win.' Marina broke Lee's serve in the third game of the final set, but Beckman broke Nguyen's serve in the sixth game to level the set at 3-3. From there, there were no more breaks until the teams got to a tiebreaker. Lee and Yuan went up 4-1 in the tiebreaker and hung on. With Nguyen serving at 4-5, Yuan hit a backhand return rocket down the line to set up Beckman's first match point. 'He had been going cross [court] the entire match, so I tried to go poach it off,' Tran said. 'He went [down the] line and caught us.' Nguyen hit a service winner to save one match point, but Yuen's slam after a good serve from Lee gave Beckman the title. Tran said that he and Nguyen plan to play together again at Sunset League finals, with the goal of making another deep run at CIF Individuals for the Vikings. 'We're looking forward to maybe winning back to back, but there's a lot of strong teams so you never know,' Tran said. 'We're just going to take this loss as motivation to try to win CIF again.' Typically, the Ojai semifinals and finals are both played on Saturday, but tournament officials scheduled the semifinals as one of three rounds on Friday due to rain in the Saturday morning forecast. Nguyen and Tran beat No. 8-seeded JiHyuk Im and Humam Alajeely of University, 7-5, 6-4, in the semifinals Friday. Rishvanth Krishna of University won the CIF boys' singles title with a 6-4, 6-4 victory over Matteo Huarte of Mater Dei. University also won the prestigious Griggs Cup, awarded to the team with the most combined rounds won in singles and doubles.
