Despite Financial Woes, Girls’ Team Not Only Survives . . . but It Thrives : Miraleste Has It All Together

Miraleste High School will put a girls’ tennis team on the court against Palos Verdes today in the Southern Section 4-A final that may be one of the best prep teams ever.

For a while this year, it also appeared that it might be the school’s last girls’ team.

The Peninsula School District, which includes the high schools of Miraleste, Rolling Hills and Palos Verdes, is in financial straits. To avoid a deficit, drastic measures appear necessary, such as closing a high school or closing a junior high and turning one of the high schools into a junior-senior high.

Luckily for Miraleste, it appeared that the school board would choose the latter and preserve the high schools. Had a high school been closed, Miraleste figured to be the likely candidate because of its low enrollment, 950 students.

“There’s three high schools,” Miraleste Coach Jim Hanson said last week before the board’s decision. “It could be one of the others. But the writing on the wall is it’s going to probably be us.”

Had Miraleste closed, it would have been the end of what has developed into one of the strongest tennis programs in the Southern Section in the last 10 years.

Located in Rancho Palos Verdes, Miraleste would seem to be a prime tennis school. Tennis is very popular in the affluent community surrounding the school. Many homes have private courts, and there are several tennis clubs nearby.

By the time local children reach high school, many of them have been playing for years.

“There’s just so many tournaments up here and so much good competition that you just start playing along with it,” Stephanie London said. London, Miraleste’s No. 1 singles player, has been playing in tournaments since she was 10.

But Miraleste, despite all the talent, was playing tennis at the 1-A level, since many of the good players shunned the high school version in favor of “serious” tennis pursuits.

Things began to change for Miraleste when Clag Offutt took over as coach in 1976. Within a few years, Miraleste was playing 4-A tennis, and before he left in 1984, Offutt’s teams won five Southern Section titles--three by the boys and two by the girls.

And the word teams is not used loosely here. Offutt went about making Miraleste a power by getting players who would usually compete against one another to play instead as a team.

“They come to Miraleste being great tennis players,” Offutt said. “Hopefully, what I can do is take an individual who’s been playing an individual sport all his life and change him.”

Offutt was able to instill the concept by keeping the whole team together, especially at practice, by limiting the number of practices players could miss for private lessons. Offutt also fostered unity by getting the players to do things as a group, until they reached a point where “they did everything together.”

The result was that these good, competitive players played together as a team, which proved to be a winning approach.

Offutt attracted many of the players who had stayed away in previous years, which presented another problem: Having to share them with their private tennis clubs and private instructors.

“Never did I infringe upon an instructor,” Offutt said. “I let (the players) have one practice a week at the club. But that was it, because if you take away the very best, you can’t have a very good practice and you divide the team.”

Most of the Miraleste players go to the Kramer Tennis Club, although some still go to noted teaching pro Robert Lansdorp at the West End Tennis and Racquet Club in Torrance. Lansdorp coached Tracy Austin, among others.

“I would have all the top kids, and as soon as school season starts, I would lose all the top kids,” Lansdorp said. “It’s a good thing for the school and a good thing for the kids, (but) it’s kind of hard to run a disciplined program.”

Even though Offutt has left to teach at Torrey Pines High in Del Mar, his legacy continues at Miraleste. The 1986 version of the Miraleste girls’ tennis team, now that it won’t be remembered as the school’s last, instead will be remembered as the school’s most dominating. When Miraleste has had all of its starting lineup playing, no team has come closer than 14-4.

Not even friendly rival Palos Verdes, which in recent years has been fairly even with Miraleste, has been able to dent the Marauders, who beat Palos Verdes, 14-4 and 12-6, despite playing without one of their top doubles players, Tricia Simpson.

“There’s not a weakness,” Hanson said. “What makes this team, we’ve got three nationally ranked girls in singles and the No. 1 team (in the Southern Section) in doubles.”

Last year’s rankings had Miraleste’s No. 1 singles player, London, ranked fourth in the nation among 18-year-olds; the No. 2 singles player, Krista Amend, ranked 16th in the nation among 16-year-olds; and the No. 3 singles player, Kim Po, was ranked 6th in the nation among 14-year-olds.

Most high school tennis teams drop off in talent after the No. 1 or 2 singles player. Not so with Miraleste, where the singles lineup is so good that the Marauders are virtually assured of winning 9 of the 18 sets in every match.

The Marauders provided a good example of this in their semifinal match with Santa Barbara. London, Amend and Po lost only nine games combined as they swept all nine singles sets en route to a 16-2 win.

Miraleste also has an answer for the opposing coach who tries to win by stacking his doubles lineup with his best players in hopes of pulling an upset. The three Marauder doubles teams won seven of nine matches.

The No. 1 doubles team for Miraleste, Cristi Bailey and Simpson, are also ranked No. 1 in the Southern Section. The rest of the doubles lineup is so strong that it forms an almost unbeatable combination.

“We’ve got talent at the top and depth at the bottom,” Hanson said. “Usually you don’t have both. That just makes it awful tough (on other teams).”

Hanson, who admits to being a B player, doesn’t take credit for the team’s success. Under him, the players spend more time taking lessons at the Kramer Club in Rolling Hills Estates, where 10 of the top 12 players go for lessons.

Hanson coached the boys’ team in 1984, and when Offutt was injured in a motorcycle accident over the summer, Hanson took over as interim girls’ coach, too. In his first season as girls’ coach, Miraleste took the Southern Section 4-A title with a 10-8 win over Palos Verdes. Hanson, who teaches math at Miraleste, was named permanent coach when Offutt left.

“I took the tennis job because they asked me to,” Hanson said. “I don’t proclaim to be a tennis instructor. I just claim to be a teacher and an organizer.”

All four division champions of a year ago made it back to this year’s finals, which start today at 10 a.m. at the West End Tennis and Racquet Club in Torrance.

In the 1-A final, defending champion Pasadena Mayfield will play Thousand Oaks La Reina in a rematch of last year’s final. In 2-A, Indio’s players will have to get up at 3:30 a.m. again this year so they can make it in time to defend their title against Chaminade. Both matches are at 10 a.m.

In the 3-A final, defending champion San Marino will play Thousand Oaks at 1:30 p.m. At the same time, Palos Verdes and Miraleste will play for the 4-A title.