Cutting School Ties

Rick Leach has played 13 years on the pro tennis tour, won $3 million and six Grand Slam events as a doubles specialist and traveled to dozens of countries. But for all his success as a pro, Leach said some of his fondest memories in tennis came during his four years of playing for Laguna Beach High and Coach Art Wahl.

“That was 16 years ago, but it seems like it was yesterday,” Leach said last week before flying to Hamburg to compete in the German Open. “I have a lot of great memories of high school tennis, playing with my friends and for my school. I wouldn’t trade them for anything.”

Esperanza senior Tom Lloyd has great memories of his three years with the Aztecs and Coach Jean Agee. But like many of today’s top high school players, Lloyd is more concerned with the future than the past. He decided against playing his final year of high school tennis so he could more adequately prepare for a college career at Arizona, and a possible professional career.

“All the guys on my team are friends,” Lloyd said. “But these guys are with school like I am with tennis. Tennis comes before grades with me. I figure, if this is what I’m going to be doing for the next 10 years, I better be serious about it.”

Lloyd is one of the county’s few highly ranked boys’ players not competing for his school this year. But last year, five of the county’s top 20 players decided against playing high school tennis. And in the last five years, several of the county’s highly recruited Division I college players skipped at least one year of high school tennis.

Why? College scholarships are harder to earn--men’s college tennis teams have only 4 1/2 scholarships to give--and gain in value as the cost of tuition increases. In addition, many have their eyes on a pro career. Those factors have led to private coaches, tennis academies and year-round tennis for the serious-minded.

So where does high school tennis fit in? More and more, it doesn’t. It didn’t fit last year for Woodbridge’s David Lingman.

“The practices weren’t helping my game,” Lingman said. “It wasn’t the best atmosphere for what I wanted to do with my tennis, which is eventually play professionally.”

But Lingman, who recently committed to Harvard, which has a top-20 program despite the fact Ivy League schools don’t offer athletic scholarships, has returned to play his senior season for the Warriors and Coach Joan Willett.

“Now that I’m set in what I want to do, I decided to come back to have fun and play for my school,” said Lingman, who chose Harvard over Pepperdine.

Lingman’s case is rare. Usually when players decide that training with their private coach or attending a tennis academy is more worthwhile than high school tennis, they don’t return. Some even leave during the season in search of better competition. Corona del Mar Coach Tim Mang, whose team is a perennial power, had one of his best players, Hunter Jack, quit before the playoffs last year to take part in junior tournaments in Europe.

Jack was a freshman.

“It didn’t hurt me personally,” Mang said. “It hurt my team.”

Mang figures the hole in his lineup cost his team a Southern Section championship. The Sea Kings lost the Division I title to Palos Verdes Peninsula on games.

But Mang, who began coaching high school tennis in 1971 at Edison, said high school tennis is entering a different era. More than anything, Mang said parents have changed.

“It’s their kid and nobody else,” he said. “Parents are spending a lot of money on tennis and they’re looking at a college scholarship. But in the long run, what kind of all-around individual is coming out of that?”

That’s what worries Leach.

“Once you start thinking you’re too good, something’s wrong,” said Leach, who led the Artists to section 3-A titles in 1980 and ’82. “There were definitely times when the competition wasn’t that good, but that didn’t matter.

“It’s nice to give something back to the school. It was nice to win a CIF title for a small school like Laguna Beach that wasn’t known for anything other than volleyball. We

weren’t football players or anything, but we were on the tennis team and we thought we were cool.”

But Lloyd said that simply wasn’t the case at Esperanza.

“I enjoyed playing for the team,” he said. “It’s too bad not many people showed up for the matches. Nobody really knows about tennis. It’s like, ‘Who cares? Let’s go watch basketball.’ ”

Lingman feels the same way.

“It’s a lot more fun when all your friends show up and there’s a big crowd out there, but that doesn’t happen too often,” he said. “The really good tennis players don’t get enough recognition in high school.”

That feeling of being unappreciated doesn’t exist as much at Corona del Mar, where there is plenty of parent and student involvement at matches. But Mang sees it elsewhere, and he is trying to promote the sport so more kids will play tennis and be recognized for their efforts and achievements.

He is working to restore national high school All-American awards for girls’ and boys’ tennis players. Next March, Mang plans to stage a national high school boys’ team tennis championship at the Palisades Club in Newport Beach. Mang routinely takes his players on tennis trips to Santa Barbara and Palm Desert.

“I’m trying to make this thing fun,” he said.

Wahl, who coached Laguna Beach from 1964 to 1984, tried to do the same thing. He often took his players on backpacking trips before the season and took his teams on two-day road trips.

“We made it very much a team thing,” said Wahl, still a counselor at Laguna Beach. “We tried to create the feeling of a group instead of an individual. That way, you’d get the kids to sacrifice for the good of the team.”

Wahl would always ask his best player to make the biggest sacrifice--play doubles with the team’s worst player. In those days, doubles sets were worth 1 1/2 points and singles sets were worth only a point. The current scoring system gives a team one point each for singles and doubles. In Leach’s freshman year of 1980, he played mostly singles. But his last three years, Leach played doubles--with the last player on the team.

The only thing he didn’t do was play on the school basketball team, which is still his biggest regret.

“Rick was an unusual young man,” Wahl said. “I think it was more of a challenge to Rick to win with the worst player rather than blowing through singles players he knew he could beat.”

In his senior season, Leach made the ultimate sacrifice--skipping the Junior French Open for the section playoffs. Laguna Beach lost in the team finals that year to Calabasas by three points, but Leach won the section individual singles title over Craig Johnson of Palos Verdes Miraleste.

Though Leach was a great team player, he didn’t play every match or make every practice. Sometimes, he missed practice or a match against an inferior opponent to hit with members of UC Irvine’s team or another top-ranked junior.

Mang gives his top players the same kind of freedom. But not every coach does. In fact, Lingman and three teammates sat out last season, in part, because they couldn’t reach a compromise with Willett over practice time. Lingman spent much of the high school season taking lessons from his private coach, Mark Kaplan.

As a freshman and sophomore, Lingman won Division I team titles with the Warriors. By his junior year, he had lost much of his motivation to win a third.

“After winning back to back, there’s nothing to play for,” said Lingman, who was ranked 86th nationally in the boys’ 18s last year. “It would have been nice to win four CIF titles, but winning four [Southern California] sectional titles would have been better.

“Junior rankings are what get you scholarships, not CIF titles.”

Dick Leach, men’s tennis coach at USC and Rick’s father, said Lingman and others like him are missing the point.

“They’re all thinking they’re going to make a million bucks,” said Leach, who coached tennis at Arcadia High from 1964 to 1969. “The truth is, most of them aren’t going to play college, let alone play professionally. These kids are missing out on an experience that is fabulous.”

Lloyd misses some aspects of high school tennis--the Ojai tournament, the team camaraderie and Agee--and he says his decision not to play was difficult. But he would hardly call his experience “fabulous.” As a sophomore and junior, Lloyd was 132-16 in dual singles sets and was the Sunset League’s second best player to Los Alamitos’ Cody Jackson.

“It was tough to keep going out there,” said Lloyd, ranked 146th nationally last year and currently ranked 10th in Southern California. “It was just a different level of play unless I played Cody Jackson. It’s tough to go out there when I know I could be playing better players on my own.”

Parker Collins, Corona del Mar’s No. 1 singles player, admits he isn’t always challenged during high school matches. But he never considered not playing for the Sea Kings.

“I think some kids think it’s a waste of time, but I like the idea of being on a team and playing for the school,” said Collins, who has committed to Washington. “When you win for your team, you do get more of a rush.”

Wahl sadly noted that fewer players are getting that rush anymore.

“High school tennis seems to have changed, starting with the mid-to-late ‘80s,” Wahl said. “It’s a shame. It’s hurt the quality of high school tennis. In the heyday of high school tennis, everybody played. I can’t remember a top player not playing. I understand why kids aren’t playing. Parents are spending all this money for private lessons and academies. They think, ‘My youngster is going to be the one to break through.’ ”

And how many actually break through? In the last 15 years, one county-bred male player has made an impact on the pro tour--Leach.

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Skipping School

Some top county players who missed at least a year of high school tennis:

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Name School Years Missed College Geoff Abrams Newport Harbor Junior Stanford Taylor Dent Corona del Mar Sophomore-senior Pro tour Chase Exon Woodbridge Junior, senior Pepperdine Joseph Gilbert Sunny Hills Senior Fresno State Joost Hol Foothill Senior Northwestern Kevin Kim Sunny Hills Junior, senior UCLA David Lingman Woodbridge Junior Harvard Tom Lloyd Esperanza Senior Arizona

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