USD Women’s Tennis Team Making Way Toward Elite

When Sherri Stephens was hired as the University of San Diego’s women’s tennis coach four seasons ago, she inherited mostly bad players and a broken-down van to transport them.

It is while thinking back to those days that Stephens can smile and proudly produce the 1988 National Collegiate Athletic Assn. preseason rankings.

USD isn’t in the top 25, but at the bottom of the list is the first hint that the Toreras have ascended to the upper class of women’s tennis teams.

“Also receiving votes,” it says. The University of San Diego.

“This year, we’ve got a chance to be as good as anybody we’ll be playing,” Stephens said. “I guess you could say that we’ve come a long, long way.”

Stephens’ first team at USD went 4-26. Getting to matches was almost as difficult for the Toreras as winning them.

USD was to open its 1985 season at a tournament in Tucson, Ariz. Stephens had played four years at the University of Arizona and was an assistant coach there before she came to San Diego.

But that van didn’t make it.

“We were driving along kind of out in the middle of nowhere when all of a sudden, I heard this incredibly loud bang,” Stephens recalled. “I thought the whole bottom of the van had just dropped out on the freeway.”

Stephens knew something was wrong because smoke was billowing out of the engine. She pulled the van over and was faced with a panicked group of tennis players.

“They were all screaming and shouting and trying to get out of the van because they thought the thing was going to blow up,” Stephens said. “Then a couple of players got out, and lying there right next to where we had stopped was a dead fox. That thing had been there awhile, and it didn’t smell too great. Now I had some players trying to get back into the van to get away from the fox and some players still trying to get out.”

Eventually, everyone fled the scene, and, thanks to some tournament officials who came to pick the team up, the Toreras arrived in Tucson.

The rest of the season consisted of one breakdown after another. USD rarely was competitive, and Stephens, accustomed to winning at Arizona, became frustrated.

“We would go out, and 10 minutes into our matches, it would be apparent we weren’t going to win,” she said. “And we were playing the same teams we were beating when I was at Arizona.”

Before her second season at USD, Stephens had to make a decision. She could either soften the schedule, or play tough opponents and try to build a program that could compete with them.

“When I first got to USD, I was told that there really wasn’t any pressure on me to win,” Stephens said. “Academics come first here, and tennis would be second. But I’m too competitive not to try and be successful. I knew I had to go out there and work.”

Stephens’ team is allotted just 4 1/2 scholarships, compared with eight at the nation’s other top schools. But by keeping her schedule top-notch, Stephens was able to offer recruits a chance to play against the best competition.

Soon some pretty good players arrived. Jennifer Larking, the 1984 San Diego Section singles champion from Poway High, transferred to USD from Oklahoma before the 1986 season; Christy Drage, the 1985 San Diego Section singles champion from Mission Bay High, joined the team a year later.

Those two, along with sophomore Aby Brayton (21-7 in singles as a freshman), freshman Tonya Fuller (ranked No. 28 nationally last year in girls’ 16 singles) and senior Laura Gonzalez (“My only Division I-caliber player that first year,” Stephens said) have given USD a solid singles nucleus.

In doubles, Larking and Brayton reached the semifinals of the West Coast Athletic Conference tournament a year ago, and Drage combined with junior Jill Greenwood to reach the quarterfinals.

Even though USD lost its only match this season, 5-4, to Pepperdine (Brayton didn’t play), everything seems to be in place for the Toreras to make a run at a national ranking.

“The key for this team is continue to believe in itself and stay together as a team,” Stephens said.

That latter doesn’t seem to be a problem. The players practice together, spend their free time together, act together, sing together and practically live together.

“On some teams, after practice ends, everybody goes their separate ways,” Brayton said. “But on this team, we’re our own group of friends.”

The group began to form in 1986 when Larking, Greenwood and doubles players Kelley Jewell and Nicole LaChiusa came to the school. Before the 1987 season, Brayton and Drage arrived.

During a road trip in Hawaii in 1986, the team got together to film a television commercial for a local snorkeling company.

“We never did get to see that,” Stephens said, “but I heard it came out pretty good.”

Last year, the players heard for themselves when they rented a studio in San Francisco and sang their version of “Twist and Shout.”

“Maybe someday we can all become stars,” Greenwood said.

Right now, they are more concerned with just getting known in tennis circles. And Stephens isn’t going to stop pushing them until that happens.

“She knows just when to work us and just when to let us have some fun,” Brayton said. “I like it here, because we all get along so well. Even though you work hard, practice is still your favorite time of the day.”

Last season, USD went 14-10, with eight losses to teams in the top 20. This year, the schedule includes nationally ranked North Carolina, Southern Methodist and San Diego State.

“We’ve got to make sure that we don’t put too much pressure on ourselves, and we just go out and play,” Greenwood said. “All of the pressure is on those teams out there that we have the possibility of upsetting.”

Larking will be the key. She has a 44-8 match record playing at No. 1 singles for the Toreras over the past two seasons, and she has several victories over nationally ranked players.

Stephens said Larking could have a successful pro career if she wishes, but Larking isn’t sure what she wants to do.

“I’ll probably try it for a while to see how I can do,” Larking said. “But being a professional isn’t really one of my big goals.”

Getting some national recognition for Larking in her senior season is one of Stephens’ goals. Larking wasn’t ranked in the top 50 preseason singles.

“The reason for that is only because she plays at USD,” Stephens said. “We’re not recognized the way we should be yet. But we’re getting there.”

And these days, when USD leaves for road trip, it likewise has a good chance of getting there.

It seems that this year, the team has a brand new van.