UC Irvine Notebook : Weichsel Has Taken to Tennis All on Her Own

As soon as you hear that Courtney Weichsel is from Palos Verdes, you figure you have her tagged.

Weichsel, the No. 1 singles player on the UC Irvine women’s tennis team, must be another one of those baseline babies that seem to pop out of molds up there like so many Stepford children. Just another in the line of pros such as Tracy Austin, Melissa Gurney and Cammy MacGregor.

You know the type. Daddy was rolling Nerf balls at her to improve her hand-eye coordination when she was 5 . . . months , that is. Mommy drove her to the club every day and sat on the sidelines during lessons, programming the rest of her daughter’s life.

Well, Weichsel did attend Miraleste High School, that perennial power of girls’ tennis, and she has taken her game to a point where she is now the ninth-ranked amateur singles player in the country.

But there was no grand scheme nurtured from birth. When a lot of her neighbors were winning national age-group titles, Weichsel had yet to pick up a tennis racket. She was, in fact, splashing around in a recreational swimming program, searching desperately for a way out of the pool.

“I didn’t like swimming much,” Weichsel said. “One day, when I was 11, I played tennis with a friend, and I ran home begging for lessons.”

Her parents agreed, but they weren’t exactly pushy tennis parents.

Her father? He thinks she should spend her time on something more constructive. “He always tells me only a few people make money doing this,” Weichsel said.

Her mother? “She comes to my matches, reads a novel and smiles when I win a point. . . . Of course, she smiles when I lose one, too.”

No, the driving force behind Courtney Weichsel’s athletic career is Courtney Weichsel. And it takes only about five minutes of conversation with her to come to that realization. She’s more effervescent than Dom Perignon.

“My parents bought me a racket and got me some lessons, and I hit a ball against the wall for three hours every day,” Weichsel, 19, said.

A year later, she was playing in tournaments against girls her age who had six or seven years of experience. During her four years at Miraleste, she was just another player on a girls’ tennis team that won two Southern Section championships and lost in the finals twice.

She was recruited by UC Santa Barbara, Hawaii, San Diego State and a number of other schools along with Irvine, but her mother made the final decision.

“She chose UCI because she thought Doreen (Irish, the Irvine women’s coach) was nice and she didn’t like the coaches who talked only about how much time we’d spend practicing,” Weichsel said.

Irish is a bit embarrassed by Weichsel’s revelation, but she’s not complaining. The Anteaters have won four of their first five matches this year, and Weichsel has lost only once.

“Courtney didn’t do anything in high school to give anyone a clue she’d be this good,” Irish said. “And she had a knee injury as a freshman last season, so she’s kind of a sleeper. But she’s such an upbeat person and she’s not afraid of anyone.

“She’s quick and a great competitor, but her biggest weakness is that she gets bored if she isn’t challenged.”

That didn’t happen often last summer, when Weichsel played on the U.S. Tennis Assn. amateur circuit. She says the experience drastically improved her game.

“I had good matches almost every day and great practices when I wasn’t playing,” said Weichsel, who lost in the semifinals of two tournaments and the quarterfinals of two others.

“I lost in Pittsburgh to this girl who weighs 52 pounds . . . well, not really. But I’m in the semis against this little teeny, skinny thing and I’m feeling pretty confident in warmups. We’re playing on clay and, you know, it’s usually like slide-and-hit, slide-and-hit for 10-minute rallies.

“Well, against her it was slide-and-watch-the-ball-go-by-you. She was incredible.”

The Mystery of the Disappearing Power Forward continues . . .

Senior Frank Woods, who is listed at 6-feet 5-inches but is probably closer to 6-4, has been having a bit of trouble scoring underneath lately. Woods posts up well and has nice moves, but he’s giving up half a foot to a lot of the people he’s playing against.

Coach Bill Mulligan gave Woods a shot at small forward early in nonconference play but decided after four games to put Woods back in the post alongside center Wayne Engelstad.

Woods is not a great jump shooter and seemed almost relieved to be back underneath. He responded by scoring 57 points in Irvine’s final three nonconference games.

In the first five Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. games, he averaged 17 points. But in the next three, his average dropped to 11. And in the last three, he has averaged just five. He has shot 37% (18 of 49) from the field in the last six games.

“After looking at the tapes of the last few games, I’d have to say he’s just been sort of worn down,” Mulligan said. “He’s had a lot of trouble because of his size. I think I’m going to move him back to small forward.”

The move, of course, is not simply an effort to revive Woods.

“We’ll have (6-9 Ed) Johansen and (6-9 Mike) Doktorczyk in that spot, and it’ll give us some more size under there. It’ll make us more of a half-court team.”

Woods has been less and less a part of the Anteater offense of late, but the move could make him almost invisible.

You don’t play on the perimeter for Mulligan unless you can shoot . . . at least not for long. In four games as an outside player this season, Woods has made just 10 of 26 shots, and a few of those were layups.

Anteater Notes

The men’s volleyball team is 1-4 in its first season of Division I play, but the Anteaters were ranked 20th in last week’s coaches’ poll. How many schools compete in Division I men’s volleyball? “I think about 30 to 35,” Irvine Coach Bill Ashen said. . . . Senior second baseman Jeff Oberdank has hit in eight straight games, dating back to the final game of 1987. He is hitting .469 and has 6 doubles, a triple, a home run and a team-leading 10 RBIs this season. . . . The Anteaters’ men’s basketball team, which finished 14-14 overall and 9-9 in the PCAA last season, is 11-9 and 6-5 this season. Coach Bill Mulligan says he “doesn’t want another .500 season,” but after looking at the remainder of the schedule--which includes road games against Utah State, San Jose State, New Mexico State, Cal State Long Beach and UC Santa Barbara--he shakes his head and says, “Of course we don’t want to be under .500, either.”