trevorthorpetravels

Pre-Season Recap + First Match of the Girls’ Season

Pre-Season & Introductions

For the second year running, pre-season was a welcome indicator that a new, invigorated team mentality is taking hold at Cate. Now in my 13th season as a high school coach, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a team come back so ready to pick up where they left off nine months earlier. We even got a visit from alum Victoria Herman, who jumped right into play without missing a beat.

In addition to a good level of readiness, the girls’ team will benefit from the addition of a new assistant coach, Sara Scott. Now a mother of two, living in the Santa Barbara area, Coach Sara brings a wealth of experience as a top-ranked junior player and successful D1 athlete (she played four years for the UCLA Bruins). Continue reading “Pre-Season Recap + First Match of the Girls’ Season”

Classic Tennis: Why Now is the Time for the Return of the Complete Player

In the last 20 years, how many top singles tennis players can you name that serve-and-volley? How many of the stars of the game utilize the slice for anything except as an occasional point-reset from the wings of the court? How many of these top players are playing doubles with any regularity?

The answer, unless you’re delusional, is nearly zero. The likes of Pete Sampras and Patrick Rafter were the last of the true serve-and-volleyers. Gone are the days when players such as John McEnroe managed to hold the #1 spot in singles for 170 weeks and 270 weeks in doubles, often concurrently. Continue reading “Classic Tennis: Why Now is the Time for the Return of the Complete Player”

Summer Tennis Camp 2015 Wrap-Up

On Thursday, we had the opportunity to learn from another highly decorated tennis player in Sara Scott. After a four-year turn at the #1 singles position for UCLA, Sara went on to be ranked as high as #400 in the world during her professional tennis career. She is a self-identified “aggressive baseliner,” and so her court was all about weight-transfer and driving through groundstrokes. After saying goodbye to Sara, we enjoyed a meal from Backyard Bowls before heading out for some more match-play in the afternoon.

During the last two days of camp, there was a dramatic shift in the Owl Points week-long competition, with Team Fresh 2.0 dominating the abbreviated format match-play in the afternoon and then fielding the top two doubles teams in the Friday morning doubles tournament. Coming from down 13-8, Team Fresh 2.0 ended up winning the competition 26-22.

Individual honors for the camp went to Taylor Kleine and Luke Williams, both of whom were models of competitive drive and sportsmanship.

Taylor won a number of doubles matches with different partners throughout the week and helped make the difference for his team on the last two days, going undefeated in singles and doubles play, earning himself MVP honors. Luke was our Coaches’ Award recipient, in part because of his strong play throughout the week, but even more so because he was a go-getter. Luke was ready to be challenged and to compete every day and was a total class-act in victory or defeat.

Harrison Fell and Ben Newton put on a spirited hat competition all week, something that has become a sort of tradition at Laguna Blanca Summer Tennis Camp. Who will be top hat next year?

We ended the camp with our customary pizza party and then moved on to the team award. As part of the team competition, the winning team got to take a photo with their coach in the owl suit, and despite protests from the losing coach, Tristan and I lined up for one round of “butts up,” during which not a single camper dealt a glancing blow. Luckily for us, not even coach Ben hit his mark. Maybe next time, guys!

On behalf of my staff, I ‘d like to thank all the campers, celebrity coaches and celebrity players that participated in our second Laguna Blanca Summer Tennis Camp. We’ll see you next year!

Team Anti-Fresh Takes Commanding Lead, but Team Fresh 2.0 Not Worried

In an interview following the day’s events, in which Team Anti-Fresh swept the point-earning opportunities to go up 8-2, Coach Ben of Team Fresh was quoted as saying, “I’m not worried.” When pressed on the matter, Coach Ben explained that his team was conserving its resources in order to make a final push during the last two days of camp. Coach Tristan declined to comment for reporters about his team’s dominance thus far, but it is widely held that the presence of his dog Boo at today’s camp may have made the difference for Team Anti-Fresh.

In reality, today’s Owl Points were earned by the narrowest of margins. Team Anti-Fresh won the early-morning footwork relay race by one stride and followed up with a narrow victory in Around-The-World just before lunch-time.

In the afternoon, Team Fresh battled back from a 5-9 deficit in sets to reach 8-9 before succumbing 6-3 in the final set of our high school format dual match.

Then, during DJ Conrad’s guest music set, everything was up for grabs until the last possible moment, with the mini-tennis tournament points changing hands in the ninth and final round of the day.

Here are some photos of the day’s action:

An ITA Hall-of-Famer Celebrity Coach + Anti-Fresh Takes Slight Edge in First Dual Match

Anti-Fresh has taken a 6-4 lead in the first of two dual matches to be held this week. The match will be completed tomorrow afternoon to break the 2-2 tie in the week-long competition for Owl Points.

In the morning, Team Fresh 2.0 put in a dominant performance untangling themselves from “the human knot” to take a 2-1 lead, but Team Anti-Fresh countered with a win during the footwork relay race.

During the early-day court rotations, we had the pleasure of welcoming celebrity coach Barbara Hallquist Degroot, arguably the most successful female player in USC history. After becoming the first female athlete at University of Southern California to receive a scholarship, Barbara went on to lead USC to four consecutive national titles, and another as a coach several years later.After her stellar college career, Degroot went on to reach #30 in the world after a quarterfinal performance in the US Open. She also reached the quarters twice as a doubles player.

Needless to say, the slice and touch-volley court featured a very talented and experienced celebrity coach today. I had the pleasure of coaching with her at Cate School for five seasons so it was great to be on the court with her again! Continue reading “An ITA Hall-of-Famer Celebrity Coach + Anti-Fresh Takes Slight Edge in First Dual Match”

Laguna Blanca Summer Tennis Camp is Here!

Day one is done and dusted, and what a day it was! Talking with our returning coaches Ben and Tristan while setting up this morning, we were all excited to reunite with our returning campers (Laguna campers are the best), but we also enjoyed welcoming some new players into the fold. Continue reading “Laguna Blanca Summer Tennis Camp is Here!”

Laguna Blanca Boys’ Tennis Season Wrap

Now that the season is a few weeks in the back mirror, I want to take a moment to reflect on our success.

Despite playing our first couple matches short-handed, we finished the regular season with a 13-3 mark, with our only losses coming against San Marcos (D1 playoff team), Cate (D3 playoff team), and Rio Mesa (D3 playoff team).

We qualified for the CIF D4 playoffs for the third consecutive year, and for the third consecutive year the Owls picked up a first-round victory in what was supposed to be a rebuilding year. In the last three seasons, we have managed 3 playoff wins and a combined match record of 50-12. Continue reading “Laguna Blanca Boys’ Tennis Season Wrap”

The Playoff Picture: Laguna to Travel Early, but Receives Favorable Draw

CIF has released the playoff pairings and all-in-all I think it looks promising. Tomorrow, we’ll travel north to Templeton to play the Los Padres League #2 seeds. With a victory, we’ll make the main draw, where Buckley awaits an opponent on Wednesday. Here’s a look at final division seedings and the draws:

Templeton has long been a distant second to Santa Ynez in the Los Padres League, but this season they keep much closer to league victory. On April 14th, Santa Ynez won an 11-7 match with a clean sweep of the doubles and two wins in singles. Templeton will be led by senior Jarred Hall, a tournament-level singles player who recently finished runner up to PJ Marymee (Santa Ynez) in their individuals tournament. With junior Phillip Hicks (pictured at top) hitting form at just the right time and a solid lineup from top-to-bottom, we should have all the answers.

Looking ahead to a second match, Buckley is a private school in Sherman Oaks that has recently been moved back down to D4 from D3 last season, so they may be a bit under the radar at #8-seed. In fact, they are entirely under the radar, since there is not a single report in a newspaper or website about any of their matches this season. It’s just as possible that, without exposure to many teams outside of their league, Buckley might yield Laguna the #8-seed spot in the draw on Wednesday, leading to a potentially easier quarterfinal round.

First thing is first, though, and that first thing is in Templeton at 3pm tomorrow. Riding a streak of 11 wins in our last 12 matches, I like our chances.

– Coach Thorpe

Whole Team Gets Involved in 12-6 Owls Win

The whole team got involved in the action today, with all 13 members playing during the match at the Dunn School in Santa Ynez. It was a far cry from our first match of the season, where we could only field seven players, two of which had not yet learned to keep score.

Leading the way for the Owls were Atty Roddick (pictured above), Phillip Hicks, and Ethan Tyng, who partnered with different teammates throughout the matches en-route to 3-0 records on the day in doubles. The Laguna doubles lineup, in fact, went undefeated on the day.

In singles, senior Connor Elmore picked up two wins and sophomore Henry Farrell (pictured below) added another in one set of play before being subbed out.

We are now 7-3 and will play again today at home against St. Bonaventure High School at 3pm. As a freelance team (not part of a league), CIF requires us to play a minimum of 16 matches to be eligible for playoffs. In addition, we must have a winning record to be considered for selection and must have an 80% win-percentage to get an automatic bid.

Doing the math, that means we have a chance to automatically qualify if we go undefeated in the last six matches of the season. Our hopes of achieving this goal have been buoyed recently by the addition of freshman Ethan Tyng and senior Cooper Farrell, as well as sophomore Kelvin Chen. The three newcomers accounted for five of our 12 sets yesterday and they figure to improve with regular practice. In addition, we are expecting the return of our wayward thespian, Mitch Gravelle, who provided a boost to the roster in the early part of the season.

One of the challenges of a 10-week season is getting to the end of it with the team intact and firing on all cylinders. I believe we are poised to do just that, making us a potential outside contender if we can just claw (or “talon”) our way into the CIF playoff picture.

– Coach Thorpe

*Thanks to Kristin Tyng for providing most of the photos for this post!

Laguna Beats Dunn and Bishop Diego, Battles in Loss to Cate

Last Friday, Laguna picked up a decisive win against Dunn without our usual #1 singles player. Henry Farrell and Alex Furukawa led the charge with sweeps in singles and doubles was dominant as well.

On Tuesday, we faced Bishop Diego and their star player Spencer Ekola. Despite being unable to make any headway against the NCAA-bound player, Laguna came out with a 14-4 victory. Jason Barnick and Kylan Tyng swept in doubles, and Martin Barnick paired with Mitch Gravelle for a win and then helped Eric Chen gain his first two victories in high school tennis. Atty Roddick and Connor Elmore were dominant in two sets before a third-round substitution that saw Erik Qin come to within a few points of his first win of the season (paired with Elmore).

Yesterday we faced the Cate School, a familiar opponent from the former Condor League. Although an early departure of the London spring break trip meant we had to forfeit three sets right off the bat, we battled to a 6-12 final score against last year’s CIF semifinalists.

Alex Furukawa and Henry Farrell paired for two wins in doubles and a close third set against Cate’s #1’s, while Barnick/Gravelle and Elmore/Roddick each added a set to the total. In singles, Phillip Hicks fought admirably against the big one-two punch of Kevin Ha and Jason Xiao, before getting a quick win at the #3 spot. Kylan Tyng reversed his fortunes from a week ago to take an exciting tie-break win against the #3 player as well.

As we enter spring break, Laguna boys’ tennis can feel pretty good about the current state of affairs. With a 3-2 record, and several of the toughest opponents of the season out of the way, April looks promising if we continue to improve.