A pair of state-ranked PLHS youth tennis veterans teamed up to win the boys\u2019 CIF doubles championship recently on the local Barnes Tennis Center courts.\u00a0
\nOddly, the duo are both freshmen who never played doubles as members of the Pointer tennis squad.
\nInstead, Keegan Smith and Ivan Thamma played singles for the Pointers, both becoming instrumental in the team\u2019s 14-5 overall match record, including an 11-1 Eastern League mark, good for a first-place tie with Serra.
\nIndividually, Smith won 42 of 43 matches over the season, while Thamma, who missed some matches for US Tennis Association events, won 30 of his 32 encounters.
\nAnd once they hooked up, they never lost a set.
\nTheir first venture was league finals, where they smoked their Serra opponents 6-0 and 6-2.
\nThen, in CIF, they dispatched Coronado (6-1 and 6-0), Canyon Crest (6-1 and 6-1), Del Norte (6-2 and 6-3 in the quarterfinals), La Costa Canyon (6-2 and 6-4 in the semifinals)\u00a0and county power Torrey Pines (7-6 and 6-3) in the finals.
\n“Winning CIF didn\u2019t really kick in until later that night,” Smith said, “and then we were ecstatic. It was just a great experience.”
\nThamma agreed.
\n“It was a feeling of relief,” Thamma said, “because we wanted to win CIF not just for us, but for our school and our coach (Mark Truver).”
\nThamma is currently ranked No. 9 (singles) and No. 2 (doubles) in US Tennis Association\u2019s Boys 16 Southern California points standings.\u00a0Smith is at No. 34 (singles) and No. 17 (doubles).
\nAt the team\u2019s recent banquet, Smith was voted Most Valuable Player, while Thamma gathered Rookie of the Year honors.
\nTruver noted his two champions, who carried the team, complement each other with different personalities. Smith, at 6-foot-1, also played junior varsity basketball for the Pointers and is known for his highly competitive nature, while Thamma is considered an even-tempered competitor.
\nThamma recalls telling Smith, “Let\u2019s play doubles. We can win this.”
\nAnd win they did.\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A pair of state-ranked PLHS youth tennis veterans teamed up to win the boys\u2019 CIF doubles championship recently on the local Barnes Tennis Center courts.\u00a0 Oddly, the duo are both freshmen who never played doubles as members of the Pointer tennis squad. Instead, Keegan Smith and Ivan Thamma played singles for the Pointers, both becoming […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":269025,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11561","_seopress_titles_title":"Two PLHS netters finish dominant season as CIF champs in doubles","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11561,11553],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-269024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-peninsula-beacon","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}