Overmatched

Longest odds: Overmatched

Advantages, not talent, separate tennis players

By Phillip Reese - Bee Staff Writer

http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/143572-p4.html

Que Huynh gathers with her tennis team at the Cordova High School courts. Huynh is the kind of player and person coaches love to have on their team - talented, focused and pleasant. But her late introduction to tennis and less-well-off background puts her at a disadvantage to more polished competitors. Sacramento Bee/Randall Benton

Backed up by a tough shot, her opponent at the net trying to end a long tennis rally, Cordova High's Que Huynh has a split second to choose among a few options, none of them promising.

She picks the toughest play, a lob, which requires finesse -- too short and her opponent will slam the ball; too long and it will go out.

Huynh hits the ball flat and soft. It flies just over her opponent's head and lands a few feet inside the line. Huynh wins the point.

Not bad for a senior who first set foot on a tennis court in high school and plays with a tennis racquet donated by charity.

"If she had lessons, just imagine what she could do," says her coach, Ray Savorn.

But Huynh, the daughter of a furniture deliveryman and a nail salon worker, won't get lessons, she won't join a racquet club anytime soon, and, despite her raw talent, she'll get beaten badly by most girls with those advantages. The athletic odds were against her the minute she enrolled at a poorer school -- maybe the minute she was born to less-affluent parents.

During the last 20 years, more than 150,000 girls have attended the region's 45 poorest high schools. None of them won a division singles tennis championship.

That's the case not just in tennis but often in golf and swimming, too. All three sports rely heavily on nuance and technique, and often require expensive equipment.

Without money, the players have few options, none of them promising.

"It's the type of sports that more country club kids play in," said John Williams, assistant commissioner of the Sac-Joaquin Section of the California Interscholastic Federation. "These are kids coming from families that have resources. They have been going to camp since they were 6 years old."

Melissa Sandoval, a senior who plays for Oak Ridge High in El Dorado Hills, did first pick up a racket at the age of 6. Like Huynh, she's got a ton of talent, but it's honed by training at a local tennis club -- she's part of the club's special tennis academy for promising players.

Even when slaughtering her opponents, as she usually does during league matches, Sandoval is exciting to watch. Her ground strokes are clean and powerful. Her serve is consistent and strong -- too strong for most opponents to return comfortably.

And she's a smart player. At times, it's like witnessing a good chess match, the way she plans out how a point will end from the very start. She'll hit a drop shot to bring her opponent to the net and then smack a passing shot by her. Or she'll wear an opponent out with repeated cross-court shots.

She's not mean about it. She's one of the nicest girls you're likely to meet. She knows her opponents don't get the training and preparation she does. And she knows that they're highly unlikely to beat her.

Sometimes, she says, "it's like playing your little sister."

Melissa Sandoval earns applause from her Oak Ridge High School teammates after winning a match against an opponent in Folsom. Sacramento Bee/Randall Benton

A tale of two teams

The Cordova High girls tennis team -- the one Huynh plays for -- doesn't have a particularly storied history. It's never had a player reach a division final, nor has the team ever played for a division championship.

They practice with threadbare and flat donated balls, good chew toys for dogs, maybe, but not good for practicing tennis.

When the girls play an official match with a fresh can of balls, they tend to hit everything long; fresh balls have more spring than flat ones.

"It goes flying out," said Huynh, describing the phenomenon. "It's like: duh-boom!"

Cordova's students consider themselves lucky to have decent courts -- often severely cracked or nonexistent at poorer schools -- but the courts are filthy. After a few games, balls pick up a film of dirt, affecting their bounce. Savorn, the tennis coach, talks about getting the local fire department to hose off the courts.

But the biggest obstacle these players face is poverty. About half the students at Cordova take subsidized lunch. Few of the girls have ever had a private lesson; the Cordova Recreation District doesn't even offer tennis instruction. That shows up most when Cordova plays schools with students from richer families.

"They blow us out of the water," said Jennifer Rodriguez, a senior on the team, whose mom works in a factory and whose dad installs shutters. "They can hit slices and big lobs and powerful serves."

Oak Ridge is one of the teams that regularly crushes Cordova. In fact, Oak Ridge blows out everyone in its league.

"We've been doing real good," said Ralph Clark, Oak Ridge's tennis coach, as he watched his team handily beat Galt. "It's been forever since we lost a league match. It's been so long I can't remember."

Oak Ridge is one of the wealthiest schools in the region. Just 1 percent of its students qualify for a lunch subsidy.

All teams get about the same amount of money from their schools, but, due largely to the wealthy neighborhoods around their school, Oak Ridge's girls raised four times more from boosters than Cordova last year.

More importantly, roughly 80 percent of Clark's team takes lessons at the Broadstone Racquet Club nearby in Folsom. They are delivered to Clark in their freshman year with mean serves and strong returns. His job is to perfect and refine.

There aren't many idle moments in Melissa Sandoval's life. The Oak Ridge senior takes a break from homework to check on her cat, Leah, at her home near El Dorado Hills. During the day, it's school and tennis practice. Sacramento Bee/Randall Benton

When talent meets advantages

When one tennis player competes against another who isn't as good, boredom can creep into the better player's game. When returning serves, the racquet stays to the side, instead of hovering in both hands, ready. The occasional winning shots hit by the worse player aren't chased down -- they're just let go with the knowledge that they won't alter the outcome.

But that's not how this match is going, even though Sandoval, Oak Ridge High's No. 2 seed, clearly is better than Galt High's top seed, Katelyn Seifert. Sandoval's serve looks as good deep in the second set as it did at the start of the match.

There's a particularly telling moment late in the match, as Seifert becomes frustrated from being run ragged and losing the first set 6-0. She's starting to swing at the ball with abandon, hitting it as hard as she can. Most of Seifert's shots are going out, but Sandoval remains alert. Finally, Seifert hits one in -- a scorcher with topspin that lands just beyond the service line.

Reacting instantly, Sandoval calmly runs to the ball and smacks a winner to the opposite end of the court.

"I don't mess around too much," she said after the match, which ended in less than an hour, about half the time of a typical competitive match. She figures her opponents often feel like, "C'mon, just get it over with."

Mixing talent with dedication and proper training creates a winner like Sandoval.

Though she started while in elementary school, Sandoval has been playing tennis seriously since the eighth grade. The biggest advantage she enjoys is her participation in the tennis academy at Broadstone. The academy runs five days a week, two hours a day. Not anyone can just walk on; you have to prove yourself at an informal tryout.

About 40 kids are in the academy, many of them still in middle school. The instruction consists largely of drills.

On a recent fall day, academy instructors set up four cones not much bigger than light bulbs. The kids line up single file, and as instructors quickly feed them balls, they volley them toward one of the cones. When they hit a cone, players waiting on an adjacent court have to run a lap.

It's a tough challenge; a group of average tennis players might hit a cone every 10 or 15 minutes. At the academy, every 90 seconds or so a cone comes down and a kid goes running.

They do drills like this over and over. The principle is simple: If Sandoval and the others practice hitting 10,000 volleys toward the corner of the court, it'll be easier to make the 10,001st shot -- the one to win the game.

The Broadstone academy costs about $20 a day, cheaper than the private lessons many of the academy girls also get. Most play in tournaments, which cost $50 plus lodging costs. Sandoval plays seven or eight tournaments a year, all over Northern California.

Sandoval's not even the best player in the academy, but, she says, "You play against some tougher girls, you get better."

When she was younger, Sandoval moved around a lot, living in Washington state and San Jose. Her dad is commodity manager for the Fluke Corp., an international manufacturer of electronic test tools. They live in a large house on 5 acres just outside of El Dorado Hills.

She's an excellent student, making top grades. Between that and tennis, she doesn't have time for much else. "It's not too bad," she said. "I go to school; I go to my sport; I go home; I do my homework and go to sleep."

After beating Seifert, when asked why she and her team win so often, Sandoval paused to think. On a lot of the other teams, she said, "the girls are just starting. Doing it for fun. There's nothing wrong with that."

But if you want to win consistently, she says, "It's a battle out there. You can't just slack off."

With natural athletic prowess and years of training, Melissa Sandoval is able to mow down most high school opponents. The 17-year-old is a study in intensity during a match against a Ponderosa High opponent at the Broadstone Racquet Club in Folsom. Sacramento Bee/Randall Benton

Going as far as she can

When she walks onto the court, it's hard to tell that Que Huynh doesn't have the same advantages as her opponent. Huynh plays with a Prince racket, her uniform is nicely pressed, she has a spacious tennis bag and her shoes look pretty new.

Huynh would have found it hard to buy this stuff on her own, though. She got help through a charity program -- SAFE (School Activities for Everyone) in Sacramento -- that gives money to disadvantaged kids.

As she plays, the deficits emerge. She has great focus and a nice touch, but her swing often stops a little short -- there's not always the fluid follow-through of a well-schooled player.

Her serve is decent, but flat -- not much topspin. If hit with any power, a flat serve may just barely skim over the net, making it hard to place or slow and easy to return.

Huynh's basic strategy varies by the girl she is playing. When up against a powerful rival, she opts for a consistent game, hoping the rival will miss. Typically, though, Huynh eventually hits a short ball that a disciplined, patient player can crush.

When she's playing less-competent girls, Huynh is more aggressive, but also inconsistent. She'll blast a passing shot after her rival hits a weak approach, then flub an easy shot. She's not good at getting pace on a ball that doesn't come at her fast.

Huynh, a senior, beats a lot of opponents, many from similar backgrounds. It's just that, as her coach points out, she's likely hit a ceiling -- a place that raw talent, improvisation and intensity alone can't take her beyond.

Huynh has played tennis for only four years, starting when she went out for the high school tennis team. She rarely plays outside the tennis season. "It's just practice at school," she said.

Huynh's instruction all comes from her coach. She learned a new slice serve earlier this year that she occasionally tries out, with mixed results.

But coach Savorn has the girls for only a couple of hours a day, a couple of days a week, a couple of months a year. He's trying to teach a lot of girls, and most need more help than Huynh.

A lot of Huynh's practice comes from hitting the ball around with a teammate.

For Huynh, a good tennis experience is not just about winning. She chats with opponents during breaks and enjoys it more when they get along. She has a habit of hitting a good shot that paints the line and then politely asking whether it stayed in.

"I don't want to call it," she explains, smiling.

Still, Huynh is not immune to frustration. She shakes her fist one October afternoon after dropping a set to a Ponderosa High player. She also keeps track of her record -- she can tell you exactly how she did three weeks ago.

Huynh lives with her dad, stepmom and little brother in a small apartment a couple of miles from the Cordova campus. Usually, she baby-sits her brother, who is in middle school, until 7 or 8 p.m. when her parents get home from work. Sometimes that means bringing Matthew along to a tennis practice or match.

On a recent afternoon, Huynh stood in a kitchen decorated with four patterns of wallpaper and scooped her brother some noodles. After feeding her brother, Huynh usually relaxes for half an hour. Then, like Sandoval, she spends much of the evening doing homework and studying.

Huynh makes good grades, mostly A's and B's. She has been accepted at the University of California, Davis, and wants to become a pharmacist, though she knows she won't be able to write her way with a tennis scholarship.

Que Huynh hits a ball during a practice session at school. Sacramento Bee/Randall Benton

A spirited final shot falls short

When Sandoval and Huynh played each other back in September at Cordova High, it was ugly. About all Huynh's home-court advantage got her was a shorter drive home. She lost 6-0, 6-1.

"She was good," Huynh said after the match. "I thought I could get more games off her."

Huynh's teammates didn't fare much better. It was a massacre: 9-0.

In the movies, the two girls would play again and, perhaps, Huynh would defy the odds. But in reality, the only way Huynh is going to get a second shot at Sandoval is if she can work her way through the draw of the league championships in late October.

The championships are at Broadstone Racquet Club, where Oak Ridge plays all of its home matches. To reach the courts, Huynh and the other Cordova girls walk past a fireplace and a large-screen TV, a cafe and a swimming pool -- a reminder of what some girls in the league have that they don't.

Unfazed, Huynh breezes through her first match. She's playing with confidence and hitting a lot of winners. To play Sandoval again, she needs to win two matches and reach the semifinals.

She draws Lauren Phillips of Ponderosa High in the quarterfinals while Sandoval plays against the second seed from Christian Brothers on the next court.

Huynh jumps to a 4-1 lead. Sandoval notices. "You're good," she says during a changeover. "Thanks," Huynh replies, then, pointing to Phillips, adds, "She's good."

Phillips is, indeed, no pushover, and she starts to play better. Both Huynh and Phillips go into "wall" mode, hitting the ball back and forth without much power, waiting for the other to falter.

Several of the battles for points last minutes; neither girl gives up on any balls, fighting for everything. But more and more, Huynh is the one who cracks.

She blows her lead and loses the first set 7-5. Then she goes down 5-4 in the second. Sensing that the match is almost over, she looks through the fence at coach Savorn and asks if she still has a chance at the consolation bracket.

"If I lose, does it mean I'm out?" she asks. Yes, Savorn nods, it does. A few minutes later it's over. Huynh walks up to the net and shakes Phillips' hand.

Sandoval goes on to finish second and qualify for the division championships. But for Que Huynh, the losing contest at Broadstone Racquet Club is her last high school singles match. Ever.

Teammates serve as an audience during a match at the club - where Sandoval trains - last October. Sacramento Bee/Randall Benton