Briefs: Locals compete in national tourney

Sage Hill School boys’ and girls’ tennis coach A.G. Longoria will be coaching a team in the World Team Tennis Junior Team Nationals for the second year in a row.

This year the tournament will be played at The Barnes Center in San Diego, today through Thursday. The event is the brainchild of Billie Jean King. This is the 15th annual event featuring teams from the 16 United State Tennis Assn. sections of the nation.

King will be in attendance throughout the event and each team will play two matches a day in a 16-team compass draw to determine the national champion.

Each team consists of three girls and three boys between the ages of 16 and 18 with sets played in singles, doubles, and mixed doubles using the WTT format. Each match consists of eight sets, two boys’ singles, two girls’ singles, one boys’ doubles, one girls’ doubles and two mixed doubles.

The Lightning team will represent the Orange County Community Tennis Assn. and will feature Sage’s No. 1 player Robbe Simon, who was voted team MVP of last season’s squad that reached the CIF Southern Section Division IV playoffs. He will play No. 1 singles, doubles, and No. 1 mixed in most of the matches, according to Coach Longoria.

Sage Hill senior-to-be Andrew Kurzweil, a two-time Academy League doubles MVP is expected to give the team a strong presence in doubles and mixed doubles and could see some action in singles.

The only returning player off of last year’s WTT squad, Tracy Beblie, is a strong singles player that had the most wins for the team in San Diego last season. Beblie, a Newport Harbor High senior-to-be, is also capable of winning in doubles and mixed. Tiffany Cheng and Zoe Oedekerk have solid credentials in singles and doubles as does Jordyn Kearney. All three will be rotating in singles, doubles, and mixed according to Longoria.

Last year the WTT team finished 16th, but has been working hard to improve from its first trip to the nationals.

“We have a more experienced team than we had last year,” Kurzweil said. “Although competition is tough and we are honored to be invited, our goal is to win a couple of matches and improve on the team’s first trip.”

— From staff reports

CdM girls take third place in LMU tourney

The Corona del Mar High girls’ water polo team earned third place in the 18U LMU Tournament this past weekend.

The Sea Kings won three of their four games, their only loss coming in the semifinals to the eventual champion, Santa Barbara Water Polo Club. Their wins were over Commerce, Huntington Beach Water Polo Club and the Florida based Raiders-WPC in the third-place game.

CdM will play in the S&R Sport USA Water Polo National Junior Olympics, starting Thursday at USC.

— From staff reports

Loomis wins title

Ty Loomis, a former UC Irvine volleyball player, and Casey Patterson of Huntington Beach won their second straight Corona Light Wide Open when they picked up their second Men’s Open division title on the nine-city nationwide tour with a 15-12 win over Adrian Carambula and Steve Grotowski Sunday at Chicago’s North Avenue Beach.

Loomis and Patterson won the title at the tour’s last stop in Santa Cruz, and went undefeated over two days of action in Chicago this weekend. The California pair struggled late in the match holding match point at 14-7 and Carambula and Grotowski battled back, picking up five unanswered points before Loomis and Patterson were able to close out the match and secure the championship and the $8,000 first-place prize.

Winners in all of the two-person divisions this weekend in Chicago earn an automatic berth into the 2010 US open of Beach Volleyball, which will be played September in Manhattan Beach.

The Corona Light Wide Open now moves on to Long Island New York, before making stops in Breckenridge, Colo. and Point Pleasant, N. J., before wrapping up at the US Open of Beach Volleyball in September.

— From staff reports