Corona del Mar doubles duo teams up well

Chris Yemma

A team of two can be an army of one.

That is the case with Corona del Mar High’s doubles teammates Jill

Damion and Allie Walters.

Together they formed a tennis duo that made it all the way to the

semifinals of the CIF Southern Section individual girls tennis

championships. And together they came one set away from advancing to

the finals and probably winning the whole shebang.

But unfortunately for the teammates, they faced a tougher opponent

in the semis than they most likely would have faced in the finals.

The CdM girls fell to Amber Harper and Jen Kaswick of

Harvard-Westlake -- a doubles team that has been playing together the

entire season.

Damion and Walters have been playing together since the Pacific

Coast League finals about a month ago. Sea Kings’ Coach Brian Ricker

teamed them together then so they would have a better shot at making

it to the individual tennis championships.

Because the league is so strong in singles, Ricker said, Damion or

Walters probably wouldn’t have made it playing solo.

Laguna Beach’s Claire Reitsch was the singles league champion this

year, defeating Tesoro’s McCall Jones, who is considered one of the

top singles players in the nation. Jones, a freshman, and Reitsch, a

junior, are both expected to challenge for the league title next

season.

So for Damion and Walters to get a chance to play in the

individual championships, Ricker discussed it with them, and they all

decided it would be best to team together.

“They weren’t familiar with each other’s styles whatsoever,”

Ricker said. “Damion plays kind of a freelance style, so there was a

bigger learning curve for Walters to see what Damion would do.”

Ricker said Damion’s unpredictable style was one of the reasons

why the duo was so powerful.

But despite not playing together before and not knowing each

other’s styles, both have experience playing double tennis. That,

coupled with the fact they’re both skilled singles players, made for

a team that melded quickly.

It also made for a team that lost in a semifinal match that could

have gone either way. In the best-of-three match against the

Harvard-Westlake girls, Damion and Walters lost the first set, won

the second set convincingly and had a chance to go up

three-games-to-none in the final set, but missed the opportunity.

Prior to that loss, the CdM girls had won nine-consecutive matches

without a loss dating back to the league finals. And in those

matches, they hadn’t lost a single set.

“They’re just good,” Ricker said. “When you put two top singles

players like that together, the [doubles] team has more talent than

everybody else.”

Both Damion and Walters were top singles players for the Corona

del Mar team. Walters played doubles for a portion of the year when

she was injured, but played singles the other portion. Damion was the

team’s No. 1 singles player, finishing the season with a 45-10

overall record.

All of her losses were against players ranked higher than her, as

were some of her wins. She defeated Troy’s Alison Ramos, ranked in

the top 10 in the nation in 14s; defeated Harvard-Westlake’s Hilary

Barte, then ranked 34th in the nation; and defeated Christina Tan of

Dana Hills, who went on to be the South Coast League individual

champion.

But for Damion and Walters both, it was a little bit of a

disappointment to not win the doubles championship.

“I honestly thought we should have won the finals,” Walters said.

“We’re both very competitive players.

Said Damion: “I really wanted us to do well and I thought we could

win. I thought if we could have gotten to the finals we definitely

could have won.”