Sea Kings duo falls

SEAL BEACH — Jill Damion and Cierra Gaytan-Leach felt fully confident that they would win the CIF Individual Tournament in doubles.

But on Friday at the Seal Beach Tennis Center, the Corona del Mar High duo showed a bit of weakness.

Their opponents pounced.

The No. 2-seeded Sea Kings team lost in three sets to Dana Hills’ Brynn Boren and Kristen Smith, 6-1, 2-6, 7-6 (7-5), ending Damion and Gaytan-Leach’s season in the semifinals.

Gaytan-Leach and Damion served for the match at 6-5 in the third set, and were up, 4-2, in the tiebreaker. But Dana Hills eventually went up, 6-4, getting two match points in the tiebreaker on a CdM double fault. Boren and Smith converted the second one as the match came to a stunning end for the CdM duo.

“It wasn’t our day to win,” Gaytan-Leach said. “I feel bad for Jill, because she’s a senior, but we just got a little nervous and that’s why we lost. It happens.”

Damion had said on Thursday that her and sophomore Gaytan-Leach would have to play “terrible” to lose. But that’s exactly how she classified their first set Friday against Dana Hills, where Gaytan-Leach held her serve, then Boren and Smith ran off six consecutive games.

“I just started out playing terrible,” Damion said. “Everything seemed off, and they played the best match they’ve ever played in their whole life.”

CdM Coach Brian Ricker knew coming in that his team might have trouble with Dana Hills’ aggressive style of having both players charge the net and hit volleys.

“[Gaytan-Leach and Damion] didn’t really have a game plan, and Dana Hills had a very clear game plan,” Ricker said. “I know their game plan inside and out. Jill and Cierra ended up having to feel each other’s game out; it’s just too bad they had to do that in the semifinals. But that’s the reality of singles players going into doubles.”

Damion and Gaytan-Leach wouldn’t be easily defeated. They rallied to easily take the second set, winning it when Gaytan-Leach, serving at 5-2, pulled out three service aces.

Then came the roller-coaster third set. The CdM doubles partners broke Boren’s serve to open it, and Damion held for a 2-0 lead. Smith was then down 30-40 on her serve, but rallied to hold.

Damion bemoaned the missed chance after the match.

“If we’d have been up 3-0, we would have won,” she said.

Instead, Dana Hills took the next two games to grab a 3-2 lead.

“We just played really good because we relaxed and played our game,” Boren said. “We stayed positive and stayed focused.”

But Damion held, then CdM broke Smith’s serve to retake the lead at 4-3.

But the Sea Kings couldn’t hold it, as Dana Hills broke Gaytan-Leach’s serve, then held for a 5-4 lead.

CdM again stormed back, as Damion held serve to stay in the match and her and Gaytan-Leach again broke Smith’s serve for a 6-5 lead.

With Gaytan-Leach serving for the match and the score 30-40, her and Damion got tangled up as both went for an overhead volley, forcing the tiebreaker.

Miscommunication hurt the CdM duo at times throughout the match.

“Cierra has a great overhead, so if they’d played together more, they probably would defer to Cierra in that situation and Jill in other situations,” Ricker said. “It’s hard to be aggressive if you’re not really sure what your partner’s going to do. But credit Dana Hills. They stepped up and made some big volleys.”

Damion stormed off the court following the tiebreaker, disappointed after her final high school match.

Injured during last year’s postseason, she also made it to the CIF doubles semifinals with Ali Walters in 2004 before losing in the semifinals in a three-set match.

That match, coincidentally, also featured CdM going up 2-0 in the third set, only to lose, 6-4.

“I’m just mad,” she said Friday. “We should have won, and we didn’t.”

But even with the individual loss, Damion and Gaytan-Leach will always have the CIF Division I team championship that Corona del Mar won this season.

“Looking at the big picture, it was a great year,” Ricker said.

Boren and Smith lost in the doubles final to Roxanne Ellison and Sierra Ellison of Tesoro, 6-3, 6-3.

Logan Hansen of Brentwood won the singles title over Troy’s Alison Ramos, 5-7, 6-1, 6-1.