Boys’ Tennis: CdM’s Paulsen steps up
Matt Paulsen was put in an unusual situation Friday morning, and it wasn’t lost on the Corona del Mar High senior.
The CdM boys’ tennis team is not exactly deep this season in terms of tournament singles players. Paulsen, who is strictly a doubles player for CdM, was all the way up on the No. 3 singles line for the Sea Kings’ first-round match against San Jose Bellarmine Prep at the 18th annual Corona del Mar All-American Invitational Tournament.
Paulsen’s singles set against Bellarmine’s Josh Leopold was the last set of the match to finish, and the math wasn’t in the Sea Kings’ favor. They were up 4-3 in sets, but by just two games. Paulsen trailed Leopold, 7-4, in the eight-game pro set, so it seemed like CdM was headed to a narrow loss on games.
Not so fast. The fiery Paulsen claimed three games in a row to send the set to a tiebreaker. He lost there, 8-7 (7-5), but not before he helped the Sea Kings claim a victory by the narrowest of margins. They earned a thrilling 4-4 (48-47 on games) win on their home courts.
CdM would go on to lose to No. 2-seeded Palos Verdes Peninsula, 8-0, in a tournament quarterfinal later Friday afternoon. The Sea Kings will play Arcadia in a fifth-place semifinal on Saturday at 8 a.m. at University High.
Sage Hill, the other local team in the tournament, will play for 13th place. The Lightning lost to top-seeded Palisades, 6-2, despite doubles wins from Adam Langevin and Emin Torlic, as well as Ryan Na and Han Chin. Sage then lost to University by an 8-0 score.
CdM has now lost in the All-American Tournament quarterfinals 11 years in a row. But nobody could take away that first-round win from Paulsen and the Sea Kings.
“It feels good, especially winning the first round, which was the most important,” Paulsen said. “I don’t really come in clutch that much for the team, but it feels good to have that senior year, the last time playing this tournament especially. All of these teams are super-good.
“I knew that we had four [sets] just looking at the scores, and I had no idea of games, but I was assuming we were up ... it was a lot closer than I thought it was. I definitely tried to fight for as many games as possible.”
In the format of five singles sets and three doubles sets, Corona del Mar and Bellarmine Prep played doubles first. The Sea Kings took a 2-1 advantage there, though the No. 1 team of Kyle Pham and Jacob Cooper lost to Bellarmine’s Andrew Ton and Coby del Rosario, 8-4.
CdM’s Diego Fernandez del Valle and Ryan Wessler beat Jonathan Chung and Christian Jimenez, 8-3, at No. 2 doubles. And Paulsen and John Hart beat Leopold and Kieran Day by the same score at No. 3 doubles.
CdM earned two singles wins. At No. 2 singles, Fernandez del Valle beat Chung, 8-6. And at No. 5 singles, Hart, who also never plays singles, topped Bellarmine’s Jimenez by an 8-3 score.
Paulsen didn’t quite end up as a winner as well against Leopold, but it was the games that mattered. CdM Coach Jaime Gresh told him at 6-7 that he needed to win one more game, and he held serve at love.
“I was impressed with his toughness and confidence in a tough situation,” Gresh said. “He definitely rose to the occasion.”
That was hard to do in the afternoon match against No. 2 Peninsula, led by UCLA-bound senior Connor Hance. The Panthers, ranked No. 2 in CIF Southern Section Division 1, beat No. 8 CdM for the second time in eight days, after also winning a nonleague match by a 13-5 score last week.
Peninsula swept in doubles to start the match with a 3-0 advantage. Pham and Cooper played well at the No. 1 spot, but Hance and Will Mori earned an 8-4 win. The Sea Kings’ best chance to win a set came at No. 2 doubles, where Fernandez del Valle and Wessler held a 7-4 lead over Dariush Jalali and Louis Hoeger.
CdM had three set points on Fernandez del Valle’s serve, but it was eventually broken. Peninsula would rally for an 8-7 (7-2) victory.
“That pro set got away from them real quick,” Gresh said. “I’m a little disappointed with not being able to fight back and at least make Peninsula earn that one. I feel like we folded. You’re going to have pro sets or sets where you have match points and you don’t get it, and that’s where it really tests you mentally. We weren’t able to step up to that task mentally.”
Peninsula then breezed to victory with five singles wins. No set was closer than Jalali’s 8-4 win over Fernandez del Valle at No. 2 singles.
CdM found the going tough in the quarterfinals, without graduates Bjorn Hoffmann and Pedro Fernandez del Valle.
“I thought we competed pretty well,” Gresh said. “That just shows you where you are as a team. I’m always going to be honest with my team, and it’s a good barometer of where you are ... Peninsula’s definitely a tier above us, and that was obvious today.
“You need depth and strength at the top. You basically need five tournament players. Last year, I thought we were a good team, we made the semis of CIF, but we really had two guys at the top [Hoffmann and Pedro Fernandez del Valle]. Even when we lost to Palisades [last year in the All-American quarterfinals], who made the final, we lost 3-5 but they won at No. 1 and 2 [singles] and 1 [doubles] ... I think you need to be deep at all spots and have some high-level talent at the top to make the semifinals. You’ve got to have some horses.”
Peninsula moved on to play Harvard-Westlake in a tournament semifinal Saturday at 10 a.m. at University. The tournament title match is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. Saturday at Palisades Tennis Club.
After the All-American Tournament, CdM resumes Pacific Coast League play next week with a busy three-match schedule. The Sea Kings are at Northwood on Monday, and at home against defending champion University, ranked No. 3 in Division 1, on Tuesday. CdM then plays at an improved Irvine squad on Thursday.
Twitter: @mjszabo
