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Athletes of the Week: Garrett Snyder and Carsten Ball (CdM)

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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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