Boys’ Tennis: CdM outlasts Beacon
The Corona del Mar All-American Invitational tournament always provides great matches for the Corona del Mar High boys’ tennis team, and Friday was no exception.
In terms of moments, it was hard to beat CdM junior Bjorn Hoffmann slugging it out with The Beacon School senior Oliver Sec from the baseline on the Sea Kings’ courts.
The Sea Kings needed Hoffmann to beat Sec at No. 1 singles to win their first-round match. Hoffmann delivered in the eight-game pro set, rallying from a 6-3 deficit for an 8-7 (7-4 in the tiebreaker) win.
Corona del Mar edged The Beacon School of New York, 4-4 and 51-50 on games, to move on to the quarterfinals later Friday. There, the Sea Kings were blanked by No. 2-seeded Torrey Pines, 8-0.
CdM has lost in the quarterfinals of the prestigious tournament it hosts for nine straight years now. But another way of looking at that is that CdM has at least made it to the quarterfinals every year.
The Sea Kings play Harvard-Westlake in a fifth-place semifinal match Saturday at 8 a.m. back at CdM.
“I thought it was good,” Hoffmann said of his team’s day on Friday. “I can’t complain; we all had fun. The first match was probably one of our best wins as a team this year, and it was one of the most exciting matches I might have ever played in my three years here so far. It was great to see everyone cheering for each other and supporting each other.”
The tournament format is five singles sets and three doubles sets for each match, with players allowed to play both singles and doubles. CdM played doubles first against The Beacon School, which won the tournament last year.
The Blue Demons took a 2-1 advantage after doubles. Sec and senior Felipe Osses-Konig edged Hoffmann and CdM senior Tyler Gaede, 8-7 (8-6), in a high-quality set at No. 1 doubles.
“We don’t play a lot of doubles together, and we’re really good friends,” Hoffmann said of playing with Gaede. “I was excited to get out there and be able to kind of share that experience with one of my good friends. We make for a pretty good doubles team, so I’m excited to play again [Saturday].”
The Beacon’s Michael Gardiner and Garrett Spoke got past CdM’s Johnny Rhone and Oliver Kim, 8-4, but the Sea Kings’ sophomore tandem of Matt Paulsen and Grant Brown beat Lucas De Santo and Ameer Hossain, 8-4.
The teams split the first four singles matches to finish. Osses-Konig beat Gaede, 8-1, at No. 2 singles, but Rhone topped Gardiner, 8-5, at No. 3 singles. Spoke rallied to top CdM’s Kim, 8-7 (8-4), at No. 4 singles, and CdM senior Dan LaBruna won easily, 8-2, at No. 5 singles.
CdM had enough games to win the match, but trailed The Beacon School in sets, 4-3. It came down to Hoffmann’s match against the UC Santa Barbara-bound Sec and Hoffmann, who recently committed to Cal, delivered.
It has been a pretty challenging week for Hoffmann, who lost two of three sets to Los Alamitos in a nonleague match Tuesday and fell to his friend Reese Stalder of Newport Harbor in the Battle of the Bay on Wednesday. But CdM Coach Jamie Gresh said those losses didn’t bother Hoffmann too much.
“He never really dwells on it, and that helps him,” Gresh said. “Every match is a different challenge. I just felt like he really started to pick his game up [against Sec] ... I felt like Bjorn played more aggressively and was connecting on his forehand. He just kind of grinded out a tough win mentally. I couldn’t be more proud of how he fought. That was a huge moment for our team as a group, to get out of the first round and into the quarters. Every team here is very good, so wins aren’t easy to come by. That was definitely an exciting part of our season, for sure, and it was cool that we were on our home courts watching such good quality tennis.”
Torrey Pines, however, was just too tough. The Falcons’ players swept in singles by scores ranging from 8-0 to 8-4. CdM also lost a couple of tough doubles sets, as Hoffmann and Gaede fell to Sreeganesh Manoharan and Charlie Pei, 8-7, and Paulsen and Brown couldn’t quite get past Alex Scemanenco and Jon Park, 8-6.
Still, the play of Paulsen and Brown, each of whom played on CdM’s junior varsity last season, has been impressive to Gresh.
“No matter if they win or they lose, they always compete and fight really hard,” Gresh said. “I love their attitudes ... they’re meshing really well. They’re always going to make a lot of balls, and they put themselves in a position to win a lot of close sets because of their scrappiness and mental toughness.”
Torrey Pines plays No. 3-seeded Los Alamitos in a tournament semifinal Saturday at 10 a.m. at CdM, while top-seeded Menlo School of Atherton plays Bellarmine Prep of San Jose in the other semifinal. The tournament championship match is scheduled for 4 p.m. Saturday at Palisades Tennis Club.
