Athletes of the Week: Garrett Snyder and Carsten Ball (CdM)
Richard Dunn
Whether it’s just another Ball or deciding between singles or
doubles, Corona del Mar High junior tennis standout Garrett Snyder has
kept matters in the family this year.
“You can flip a coin, it doesn’t matter,” said Snyder, the Sea Kings’
No. 2 singles player during the regular season, in response to a question
about playing singles or doubles, but could have just as well been
talking about his brother-trouble doubles partners.
Freshman sensation Carsten Ball, a left-hander, teamed with Snyder to
capture the doubles title Saturday in the CIF Southern Section individual
championships at SeaCliff Tennis Club in Huntington Beach, on the heels
of this year’s interscholastic doubles championship at the prestigious
Ojai Valley Tennis Tournament with CdM senior Cameron Ball, Carsten’s
University of Arizona-bound older brother.
“Cameron and I played (John Mano and Jason Wood of Los Alamitos) at
Ojai this year in the quarterfinals and beat them, 6-2, 6-2, so we knew
what we were up against (in the CIF Finals),” added Snyder, as if Cameron
and Carsten are interchangeable.
“They’re both great players. There’s not too much difference. One’s
older. Mature more. But this guy (Carsten) is great. He’s probably the
only freshman to win CIF.”
Snyder and Carsten Ball were seeded No. 1 in Friday’s Round of 16 at
SeaCliff, where they continued their mastery in the postseason and
finished unbeaten without dropping a set (10 total matches, including
five in the Pacific Coast League Finals).
While Snyder won his second CIF doubles title in a row, Ball became
the first freshman since Parker Collins of La Canada in 1996 to claim a
CIF doubles crown. As a sophomore last year, Snyder and then-senior Brian
Morton (UC Irvine) won the doubles championship.
“I knew we could beat (Mano and Wood) like we did (6-3, 7-5),” said
Ball, ranked No. 1 in Southern California in the boys 14s in singles,
and, as CdM Coach Tim Mang pointed out: “That’s one of the positives
about high school tennis. You can be in the 14s and you can play some of
the top 18-year-olds in the nation, and (Carsten) took them to the wire
this year, too.”
Added Snyder, with his partner sitting next to him on the bench after
winning the CIF title: “I keep forgetting he’s 14 -- you’re awesome,
Carsten.”
Snyder, who has now won three major doubles titles with three
different players since the 2001 CIF championship with Morton, became the
12th player in history to capture back-to-back CIF doubles titles and
only the sixth to accomplish the feat with different players.
Ball and Snyder cruised to the finals with a 6-1, 6-1 semifinal win
over Jon Rubenstein and James Thayer of Harvard-Westlake, which Mang said
might have been their best match since coming together.
Snyder, ranked No. 7 in Southern California in the 18s in singles, and
Ball became the seventh CdM doubles team to win a CIF championship. Jim
Curley and Jordan Otterbein won CIF doubles titles for the Sea Kings in
1975 and ‘76, the only CdM players to repeat before Snyder.
“They’re two of the best players in CIF, and it’s nice to have them
back next year,” said Mang, who “stuck them” in doubles in a PCL match
against Northwood, “just to tell the league that they play doubles
together, to make everybody happy.”
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