Foreign success at Sage

Chris Yemma

Born in a small French town and splitting the first 12 years of his

life between Tokyo and France, Tristan Cordier has an international

mind-set.

That is partially why the senior tennis player chose, along with

his parents’ guidance, to attend Sage Hill School. The class sizes

were smaller than public schools, leaving more room for

teacher-student interaction.

Lucky for the Lightning, Cordier chose to direct his athletic

efforts toward tennis. Now, closing out his senior season, Sage’s No.

1 singles star has helped guide the Lightning to a second-place

finish in the Academy League and a No. 5 ranking in CIF Southern

Section Division V.

Recovering from a month-long illness, last year’s league singles

runner-up closed out his Academy League career with a fourth-place

finish in the league individual championships Saturday at the Balboa

Bay Club Racquet Club.

But, headed to UC San Diego and hoping to walk on to the tennis

team, Cordier’s career in the sport is far from over.

“I think he’ll be a good genuine player,” Sage Coach A.G. Longoria

said. “He’s got the game to play. He’s very quick and he’s got the

strokes. And normally he has a lot of stamina.”

Longoria added that Cordier would have had a good chance to win

the individual league title had he been at 100%.

Cordier was thinking along the same lines.

“I guess you’ll never know, but I’d like to think I would have had

a better result had I been better,” said Cordier, who lost, 6-3, 6-1,

to Whitney’s Brian Chen in the third-place match. “It was a

conditioning problem.”

Shortly after moving to the United States when he was 12, Cordier

wasn’t even looking to play tennis. But after trying out for a local

youth baseball team and not making the cut, his mother made him try

tennis, he said.

“Basically, I was so bad at baseball, I needed another sport to

maintain an active lifestyle, and I ended up liking [tennis],”

Cordier said.

The Irvine resident played doubles for Sage his freshman and

sophomore years before switching to singles. In his first year

playing singles, last season, Cordier led the Lightning to second in

league while individually advancing to the second round of the CIF

postseason, competing against all divisions. He has made first-team

all-league three straight years.

Cordier entered Friday and Saturday’s tournament 32-8, 12-1 in

league singles matches, but lost in the semifinals to Whitney’s Andy

Shin, 2-6, 6-2, 6-1, where fatigue set in, he said.

“He definitely would have been seeded No. 1 [if he wasn’t out for

three weeks],” Longoria said. “He’s just not in tournament shape

right now.”

The Sage duo of sophomores Conrad Whitaker and Michael Garrison

lost in a third-place doubles match to Whitney seniors Vinay Shah and

Eric Young.