UC Irvine Notebook : Anteaters Suffering From a Spring Fever

Last spring, the UC Irvine men’s tennis team made its second appearance in the NCAA championships. The Anteaters had been eliminated in the first round in 1983. But this time, junior Mark Kaplan advanced to the semifinals of the singles championship, and the team of junior Darren Yates and senior Julian Barham reached the final of the doubles championship.

UCI finished the season ranked 15th in the nation.

A successful trip to the NCAAs should be a significant step forward for a young and burgeoning program, right? Well, if it is a steppingstone, the Anteaters tripped over it.

“You know how sometimes when you fall madly in love, the rest of your life can suffer?” asked Greg Patton, entering his ninth season as men’s tennis coach. “Well, we fell in love with the NCAAs.”

The Anteaters spent two weeks in Georgia during the team and individual championships. And for a couple of weeks before that, they didn’t think about much else.

“The whole team was hurt academically,” Patton said. “The guys with A averages dropped to Bs. The Bs went to Cs, and so on.”

It’s the “so ons” who worry Patton.

Kaplan, whose overall grade-point average is above 3.0, took an incomplete in an economics class because he didn’t want to get a C. He came up one unit short of the required minimum and is ineligible this semester, but Patton expects him to be eligible for the start of the collegiate season next spring.

Steve Oliver, a sophomore and a member of the No. 3 doubles team last year, fell behind in a number of classes, and his GPA dipped so low that he, too, is ineligible. Patton does not expect him to improve his grades in time for the forthcoming collegiate season.

The crowning blow to the program came later in the summer when Patton discovered that Yates--buoyed by his success at the NCAAs--had decided to turn professional.

“That was really a disappointment,” Patton said. “I found out from some other guys on the circuit. I guess Darren didn’t want to tell me himself because he was afraid I would try to talk him out of it.”

With Yates, the Anteaters figured to have a good chance of finishing in the top five next year. Without him, they may struggle to finish as high as they did this year.

“There’s no doubt Darren is one of the finest doubles players in the country and our No. 1 and No. 2 doubles teams would have been awesome,” Patton said.

So what about the players with academic troubles? Patton is always one to emphasize the positive.

“Those guys are like skinny coyotes now,” Patton said. “They’re dying to play. Mark missed the Volvo (Tennis/Collegiate Championships) last month and he’ll miss the Rolex (International Tennis Coaches Assn. Southern California Championships) we’re hosting next week. He’s hungry.

“The fat coyotes stand around sometimes, but hungry ones never let the bunny get away.”

Once in a while, Patton has to stop and laugh at himself, almost as if he’s not sure where his words are coming from.

“I guess I’m grasping for reasons why this all can be a positive,” he said. “I must admit, I had dreams of grandeur early this summer. I woke up every morning with a smile on my face.”

Losing players to the pros, dealing with the distraction caused by the national championships . . . it’s all part of growing up in Division I tennis.

Kim Cusimano looks a lot like Tracey Ullman. And, like Ullman--whose television show is sort of a British version of “The Carol Burnett Show”--Cusimano is a woman of many talents.

She has baked pastries for a living, has worked on the ski patrol at a resort near Flagstaff, Ariz., plans to go to graduate school and later work as an industrial psychologist . . . oh yeah, and is the all-time leading scorer on the UCI women’s soccer team.

Cusimano, a senior, will be playing in her last two matches as an Anteater today and Saturday, and she needs two goals to tie the school record for goals in a season (11, set by Karin Grelsson in 1986). She already has the UCI career goal record (21) and the school mark for most goals and points in a game, established last season with a three-goal, six-point performance against Occidental.

“Records are nice, but I play soccer because I love it,” she said. “I didn’t even know they had a program when I came to UCI. I came here for the social ecology major.”

At 6, Cusimano played in the first American Youth Soccer Organization league in Garden Grove because “all my friends were going to play.” She helped start the first girls’ soccer team at Pacifica High School as a sophomore. And she’s helping Irvine’s fledgling program gain a measure of respect. UCI is 7-10-1 this season.

“We’re young, we don’t have any scholarships, but we have fun,” Cusimano said.

And that’s important to Cusimano.

Anteater Notes UCI sailor Jon Pinckney qualified for the National Singlehanded Championships with a second-place finish in the Pacific Coast Singlehanded Championships held at Alamitos Bay last weekend. Stanford’s Tom Kuhnle won the race. Pinckney and Kuhnle will represent the Pacific Coast Intercollegiate Yacht Racing Assn. in the national championships in Charleston, S.C., Nov. 20-22. . . . Sophomore goalie Mike Garlan, who recorded his fourth shutout of the season Sunday in Irvine’s 3-0 men’s soccer victory over Loyola Marymount, set a school single-season save record with 112. . . . The Anteater water polo team is ranked No. 3 in the nation after victories over Stanford (then ranked third) and UCLA (then No. 2) last weekend. The Anteaters (12-7 overall and 5-1 in the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn.) play host to No. 2 USC Sunday at Heritage Park in Irvine.