Boys tennis: CdM gunning for No. 1 again

Richard Dunn

CORONA DEL MAR - Good competition is healthy. What other single

factor is more important to an amateur athlete?

So, as Corona del Mar High’s boys tennis team embarks on what should

be another banner season, it has a logjam for the No. 1 singles spot and

a lot of traffic at No. 3 doubles.

“It’s a tossup,” CdM Coach Tim Mang said of both spots in the lineup.

As if the top-ranked preleague team in Orange County doesn’t have

enough strength at the top, there’s a group of seven players battling for

three doubles positions, including one at No. 2 doubles with senior Randy

Myers, Mang’s only locked-in choice below No. 1 doubles.

UCI-bound senior Brian Morton, junior and defending Pacific Coast

League singles champion Cameron Ball and Santa Margarita transfer Garrett

Snyder, a sophomore, make up one of the best 1-2-3 punches in the county

and CIF Southern Section Division IV, where the ’01 Sea Kings will try to

dethrone Brentwood.

“Division IV has more depth than any division (in the section) this

year, but I’d still rather be in Division I,” said Mang, whose team was

forced to drop from Division I to Division IV, because of the section’s

new enrollment-based playoff format, which prohibits move-ups and stymies

the ability of smaller schools like CdM to pursue competition at the

highest level.

CdM will host Brentwood in a key nonleague match Tuesday at 3 p.m. at

the Balboa Bay Club Racquet Club in Newport Beach. Brentwood is also one

of the 16 teams playing next week in the second annual CdM National High

School Boys All-American Invitational at Palisades Tennis Club.

How the Sea Kings perform in the tournament, like all the teams, will

carry a lot of weight in year-end national rankings by USA Today. Last

year the tournament was won by Peninsula, which finished No. 1 in the

national poll and returns all but one of its players.

The Sea Kings, who captured the CIF Division I title and finished No.

2 in the USA Today national rankings in 1999, return Morton and Ball in

singles, along with Myers, Peter Kulmaticki and Michael Bean in doubles.

Kulmaticki and Bean won last year’s Pacific Coast League doubles title

and will play No. 1 doubles this year. They beat Myers and then-teammate

Robert Kennedy in the league finals.

But who plays singles and in what order of the lineup for the Sea

Kings this spring isn’t nearly as important as the bottom-line results

Mang is seeking from his three highly ranked players.

Beginning with the lone senior in the star-studded trio, Morton is

ranked ninth in Southern California in the 18s, thanks to a big victory

in 2000 over top-ranked Ryan Redondo, who is playing No. 6 at Pepperdine

this season as a freshman.

Morton, 94th in the United States Tennis Association rankings, is also

an excellent doubles player who plans to team with Snyder in doubles at

Ojai and the CIF Southern Section championships.

“That’ll be an unbelievable doubles team,” Mang said.

The big-serving Ball, who missed the CIF individual singles

championships last year because of an injury after winning the PCL title,

is ranked 15th in the Southern California 18s.

“(Morton and Ball) are very close (in talent) obviously,” said Mang,

who will probably have to flip a coin before each match this year to

determine the order of singles.

Snyder, who attended eighth grade at CdM and returned to school in the

area after missing his friends, is ranked 18th in the Southern California

16s and 51st in the nation.

In the Sea Kings’ nonleague victory March 6 over Los Alamitos, 13-5,

Morton played No. 1 singles, Snyder No. 2 and Ball No. 3, while all three

swept their matches against Orange County’s third-ranked team. Snyder did

not lose a game.

University, ranked second in the county, is expected to be CdM’s only

threat in PCL circles. The county’s top two teams square off March 27 at

CdM.

“There’s a giant drop-off after us, Uni and Los Al,” Mang said.

CdM finished 19-5 last season, and second in league behind University.

The Sea Kings enjoyed a strong postseason, reaching the Division I

semifinals where they lost to Harvard/Westlake on games, 92-86, after a

9-9 tie.

Seniors Justin Ning, Shaan Wadhwa, Ryan Stockwell and Geoffroy Ralet,

along with sophomores Josh Stuart, Bryan Warsaw and Issei Saida, are

battling for three doubles spots. Ralet is an exchange student from

Belgium.