Marina doubles team settles for runner-up finish at Ojai Tennis Tournament
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OJAI — Trevor Nguyen and David Tran came extremely close to earning another significant tournament victory on Saturday afternoon.
It can’t get much closer than a third-set tiebreaker.
The Marina High boys’ tennis tandem was a few points away from winning the Ojai Tennis Tournament title, dazzling the crowd at Libbey Park with their play at times.
In the end, Beckman senior Caden Lee showed he could go back to back.
Lee won his second straight CIF doubles division title at the prestigious tournament, teaming with freshman Edwin Yuan for a 4-6, 6-4, 7-6 (7-5) victory over Nguyen and Tran.
“It feels great,” Lee said. “The first two years, I played singles, and I only got to the second round once and the first round the second time. Going all the way with two different partners, it just feels really good.”
Nguyen, a senior, and Tran, a junior, were last year’s CIF Southern Section Individuals doubles champions for Marina and top-seeded this year at Ojai. They made it into the championship match without dropping a set.
“It would have been nice to win it my senior year, but they played well,” Nguyen said. “In the third set, it was just anyone’s game, whoever executed better on the returns. That was probably the biggest factor.”
Despite the loss, Nguyen and Tran became the first boys’ tennis players from a Huntington Beach Union High School District school to ever make a title match at the Ojai tournament. Last year, they fell in the semifinals.
They looked good early Saturday in the title match, racing to a 4-0 lead in the first set against the No. 2-seeded Beckman duo, which closed within 5-4. Nguyen was successfully able to serve for the set, recording a service winner at deuce before an outright ace.
Lee, an Air Force commit who won Ojai doubles with his younger brother Tyler last year, came back strong in the second set with Yuan. They took a 4-1 lead, though this time Marina battled back to 4-4. Tran’s serve was broken at 4-5, however, as the match went to a decisive third set.
“Both teams played really well at times, and were off at times,” Marina coach Chuck Kingman said. “Just a lot of swings of momentum. A couple of points either way, but they played really well. It’s not like we gave it to them. They earned the win.”
Marina broke Lee’s serve in the third game of the final set, but Beckman broke Nguyen’s serve in the sixth game to level the set at 3-3. From there, there were no more breaks until the teams got to a tiebreaker.
Lee and Yuan went up 4-1 in the tiebreaker and hung on. With Nguyen serving at 4-5, Yuan hit a backhand return rocket down the line to set up Beckman’s first match point.
“He had been going cross [court] the entire match, so I tried to go poach it off,” Tran said. “He went [down the] line and caught us.”
Nguyen hit a service winner to save one match point, but Yuen’s slam after a good serve from Lee gave Beckman the title.
Tran said that he and Nguyen plan to play together again at Sunset League finals, with the goal of making another deep run at CIF Individuals for the Vikings.
“We’re looking forward to maybe winning back to back, but there’s a lot of strong teams so you never know,” Tran said. “We’re just going to take this loss as motivation to try to win CIF again.”
Typically, the Ojai semifinals and finals are both played on Saturday, but tournament officials scheduled the semifinals as one of three rounds on Friday due to rain in the Saturday morning forecast. Nguyen and Tran beat No. 8-seeded JiHyuk Im and Humam Alajeely of University, 7-5, 6-4, in the semifinals Friday.
Rishvanth Krishna of University won the CIF boys’ singles title with a 6-4, 6-4 victory over Matteo Huarte of Mater Dei. University also won the prestigious Griggs Cup, awarded to the team with the most combined rounds won in singles and doubles.
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