An Unlikely Cast of Champions : In Three Years, Edles Builds a Winner at Chapman

Consider the cast of characters Mike Edles put together this year for the Chapman College men’s tennis team.

One guy was discovered stringing rackets. Another has only been playing since he was 19 and almost lost his hand last season because of a blood clot. Don’t forget the Kenyan teen-ager or the New Zealander who sounds more Californian than most Californians. Throw in a Canadian, another New Zealander, a couple of local kids and you what do you have?

No, not another Norman Lear sitcom, but the 1985 NCAA Division 2 national champion. Oh, for good measure, the guys who clinched the title with a three-set doubles victory teamed just once all season--and not very successfully.

Even Walt Disney wouldn’t accept a script so far-fetched. “Son of Flubber,” OK, but this? Get serious.

As crazy as it sounds, Chapman (24-12) did win the 1985 title. The Panthers, who finished second to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in the California Collegiate Athletic Assn., defeated Hampton College for the title, 5-4, at Cal Sate Northridge.

The story began three years ago in Stockton. Edles, who had been an All-American at UC Irvine and coached three years at Cal State Bakersfield, had just been hired at Chapman. Looking for players to turn around the ailing Panther program--Chapman finished seventh of eight teams in the CCAA in 1982--Edles traveled to the junior national championships, but was having little luck.

“I really didn’t see anything that impressed me,” Edles said. “So I asked my friend Rich Andrews, who’s the pro up there, if he knew of anyone available who could help me. He said the guy who was his assistant was a high school All-American. So I hit with John and I was impressed. I offered him a scholarship without ever seeing him play a match.”

John, is John Hancock, and yes that’s his real name. It was Hancock and 17-year-old Kenyan Paul Wekesa who clinched the national championship in No. 2 doubles.

Wekesa and Hancock were thrown into the situation because of injuries to the regular No. 2 team of Paul Charlesworth and John Soldat.

“They had played together once before and really didn’t look that good,” Edles said. “I really wasn’t worried about John, I did worry that Paul might not be able to handle the pressure. But John really carried the emotional load in the match.”

It was ironic that Chapman clinched the championship in doubles. It had been the weakest part of the Panther game in 1984.

“Over the past two seasons, we’ve had plenty of great singles players, but doubles has kind of lagged behind,” Edles said.

Edles started mandatory doubles practice for every player.

“We worked on doubles more than we did singles in practice,” No. 2 singles player Terry Davis said.

Davis, 27, took up tennis at 19 and met Edles only by chance of a tournament draw.

“I played Mike in a tournament,” Davis said. “He won, but he must have liked the way I played. I hinted that I need a full ride to come here and he said he’d try to get it for me.”

Davis, whose right forearm may be larger than Steve Garvey’s, brought with him a serve estimated at 130 m.p.h. But midway through last season, Davis started to feel pain, numbness and tingles his right arm and hand. What was finally diagnosed as a blood clot in his wrist, caused by arteries breaking, put Davis out for six months.

“The thing was so rare, the doctor said the only record of another case was some Japanese pitcher,” Edles said.

Said Davis: “The doctor told me that if I came back, I was playing at my own risk.”

Davis said he finally had to block out the thought of the injury. He won 12 of his last 15 matches and reached the semifinals at the NCAA Division 2 individual championships. He combined with Troy Turnbull to win their doubles match against Hampton in the final. This surprised Turnbull.

“Every time Terry and I get together for doubles, I write it off because we stink,” Turnbull said. Indeed, the pair was under .500 for the season. “I don’t know if I can’t concentrate after singles or what, but we weren’t very good.”

Ah, Turnbull. The 1985 CCAA Most Valuable Player and Chapman’s No. 1 singles player is enamored, to say the least, with the Southern California life style. In fact, it was Southern California that sold Turnbull on Chapman.

“I chose Chapman without ever seeing the campus,” said Turnbull, who grew up in Auckland, New Zealand. “I love this area. It was either go to school here, or sleep on the streets.”

Turnbull has adjusted quite well to his surroundings. Witness this recent conversation between Turnbull and Hancock about some rackets in Hancock’s car, which had run out of gas.

Turnbull: “Dude! Where are my rackets?”

Hancock: “They’re in the trunk of my car.”

Turnbull: “AAHH Dude! That’s sorry. You’re pathetic sometimes.”

Hancock: “Hey, I’ll try not to lose any sleep over it.”

Sleep was difficult to come by when the Panthers took a three-game mid-season trip that has commonly been known as the nightmare.

“We had just beat Harvard and we might have been a bit cocky,” Edles said. “We played Bakersfield, San Luis Obispo and UC Santa Barbara and lost all three matches. The loss to Bakersfield lost us the conference title.

“Our season could have gone either way after that trip. We decided we had to work harder than everyone else. We knew we had more talent. I don’t know if fate had anything to do with it, but I know we had a lot of luck.”