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  • USC tennis coach Peter Smith, right, and his son Riley,...

    USC tennis coach Peter Smith, right, and his son Riley, who plays in Los Alamitos High and has aspirations of joining his famous father on the Trojans tennis team.

  • Los Alamitos' Riley Smith returns a volley against Corona Del...

    Los Alamitos' Riley Smith returns a volley against Corona Del Mar's Bjorn Hoffmann during Tuesday's tennis match at Los Alamitos.

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Peter Smith has two areas of expertise: winning NCAA tennis championships and sniffing out the tricky tactics of his three boys.

“I try not to make it all about tennis because my life is really all about tennis. Although I don’t like them watching too much TV, and they get around it by saying, ‘Let’s watch tennis!’

“But I’m onto them.”

In addition to serving as the head coach of the USC Trojans men’s tennis team, a program that has won five of the last six NCAA championships, Smith is a coach and father at home. His three sons, Tanner, Riley and Colter, all dream of playing for their dad at USC in the near future.

However, Smith, a Long Beach State alum and former tennis coach for the 49ers, has made it a point to dial back the tennis hysteria just a little, so much so that his three boys live as unpressurized a life as possible.

But as CIF individual play is set to begin Thursday, Riley, a sophomore at Los Alamitos High, is not concerned about the pressure of being Peter Smith’s son. He’s more concerned with the pressure he puts on himself.

“I’m probably the most competitive person you’ve ever met,” Riley said.

And with that fire, Riley might just be one of the next great players to flourish under his father’s magical touch.

There are always two sides to a story. And no one believes that more than Riley.

“There’s two ways to look at it: One is I’m Peter’s son and I’m expected to do this and that. But the other is he’s also one of the best coaches in the nation. He’s helped me tremendously. So it’s not a bad thing. It’s the best thing.”

Having Smith as a coach and a father certainly has proved beneficial for his three sons, who Smith is quick to admit are each better than he was when he was their respective ages.

But though they might be better on the court, off the court is where Smith has made his greatest contributions to the sport.

Smith was inducted into the Long Beach State Athletics Hall of Fame in 2011, and he represented the last superstar for a 49ers tennis program that shut down in 1991.

He reached the conference singles final all four years he played at Long Beach and won twice to give the 49ers two Pacific Coast Athletic Association titles. The PCAA was the forerunner to the Big West.

Two years after graduating, Smith became the 49ers coach at age 23. And after coaching stints at Pepperdine and Fresno State, he was hired on at USC in 2003.

The Trojans won their first national title under Smith in 2009. Their second under Smith came in 2010. Their third and fourth under Smith came during the next two seasons.

Smith’s fifth came just last week.

“Winning just one NCAA championship is really, really hard,” Smith said. “You start in August and you try to visualize winning a title, and you think about all the great programs across the country, and you realize how hard it’s going to be. So to look back and say we’ve won five of the last six, it’s ridiculous. It’s still surreal.”

But along with those titles, in addition to expectations now following the Trojans, they’ve also fallen on the laps of Smith’s boys.

“I’d be lying if I said they don’t feel the pressure,” Smith said of his three boys. “Certainly, it’s not pressure in our house, but it’s a tough line to walk as a dad and a coach. They want to please me. Some days, I’m a little bit too real with them. It’s not simple.”

Tanner is a senior at Servite High. He’s battled an arm injury in the past two seasons, according to Smith, but he will next season walk onto the USC tennis squad.

Colter, the youngest, is a seventh-grader at McAuliffe Middle School in Los Al. He will attend Los Al High and will be a freshman when Riley is a senior.

And when that day comes, when Riley is one year removed from college, he’s hoping he’ll have a wealth of accolades under his belt and will be ready to help the Trojans program right away.

“If I walk on at USC, I’ll be looked at as Peter Smith’s son. But I want to be looked at as Riley Smith.”

Riley came out of his shell in his sophomore season with the Griffins, winning the Sunset League Most Valuable Player, as well as the league’s singles title. He also led Los Al to its third consecutive league title.

Los Al coach Mike Moorewood has spent the season marveling at the transformation that Riley made from his freshman year to now.

“He was fairly immature as a freshman, as most freshmen are. He would get rattled a lot. But now, he’s just growing up. He’s a pure leader on the team. He has a mental strength now that he didn’t have before.

“Last year, he dealt with injuries because he was just growing so much. Now, he’s starting to slow down and get some balance in his body. That, coupled with is mental strength, is unbelievable.”

Riley, who stands 6-foot-5 already, attributes that maturation to none other than his old man, whom he happens to tower above.

“It’s not all tennis with him, surprisingly. We have an on-thecourt and off-the-court relationship. There is the coach and player stuff, and then, the father and son.”

That notion is greatly supported by the fact that Smith hasn’t considered home-schooling any of his sons, a common occurrence for tennis players of their caliber.

Smith’s greatest motivation for not implementing a deeper strategy is his own career. Often times, according to him, kids that he coaches or crosses paths with at USC are burned out from the amount of tennis they’ve played from childhood to college.

That’s an experience Smith is eager to shield his sons from.

“Making a living in tennis, I see how difficult that is. I see a lot of kids in Division 1 that are burned out because they faced so much pressure. So again, we try to focus on all the right things.

“Kids with their ability live abnormal lives. But I want their lives to be as normal as possible. I rather have them be not as good but much more normal.

Smith doesn’t let all of his knowledge rest at the USC campus. He also operates and coaches at the Southern California Tennis Academy.

And on the front page of the academy website is a picture of none other than one of his favorite pupils: Riley.

“It’s very challenging,” Smith said of coaching sons. “It’s challenging for them and for me. We get challenged on a daily basis. Hopefully, we’re passing more challenges than we’re failing.”

The challenge currently resting on Riley’s plate is the first round of the CIF singles tournament. But all signs point toward Riley being one of the best prep players in the area, if not the nation, by the time he’s a senior.

And if that is the case, a new form of pressure will rest its weary head right on his shoulder.

“It’s his decision where he wants to play,” Smith said. “But the will is not complete. I could still write him out if he chooses UCLA.”

Contact the writer: bwatson@lbregister.comTwitter: @brantley_watson