Orcutt Academy’s Kasey Ortiz has been playing tennis since she was old enough to walk, and it shows.
The 14-year-old freshman ran the table in 2009, going 45-0 in singles play and catapulting the school’s junior varsity tennis team to a 16-1 record.
Though she’s been playing longer than most of her peers already, Kasey is enjoying seeing her own game continue to progress.
“It’s a lot of fun to go from being bad to being good and from good to even better,” she said. “A lot of JV players don’t have strategy. I go cross-court sometimes, and I mix up my shots a lot.”
Kasey said she didn’t think about being undefeated once on the court, but her team’s only loss—against Cabrillo High School—stood out in her mind.
“I didn’t lose any sets, but it was a really hard match,” she said.
As a dependable table-setter for her team, Kasey made life easier for her teammates all season, according to her coach and father Patrick Ortiz.
“She’s been going really hard at it about a year and a half, and her game has just taken off,” he said. “It really sets a tone if you go out there knowing one of your kids is going to beat their three best players. It demoralizes the team a little bit, and you’re always saying to yourself, ‘Kasey’s going to get us those sets.’
“If it ever comes down to a crunch-time situation, you know she’s going to come through for you,” he added.
Orcutt Academy, now in its second year of existence, is yet to field a varsity tennis team. Next year, Coach Ortiz hopes his team can join the Condor League and make it to the California Interscholastic Federation playoffs.
Next summer, Kasey will practice with coaches from the University of Southern California and the United States Tennis Association Junior Development Team. She hopes to earn a college scholarship to UC Santa Barbara for tennis and receive a ranking in doubles.
—Jeremy Thomas
This article appears in Nov 12-19, 2009.
