Self-Service : Cooper Courted a Challenge at UCLA That Might Bring Her an NCAA Title

The way tennis pro Bob Hochstadter saw it, prize pupil Allyson Cooper had two choices. She could be the proverbial “big fish in a little pond.” Or vice versa.

Those were the words he used, those were the choices he offered.

But Cooper didn’t buy a word of it.

It’s not that she was basing her opinion on any great knowledge of the tennis world. Or the real world, for that matter.

She was just a 17-year-old senior at Kennedy High who had played tennis for only six years, four competitively. She had excelled at Kennedy, where she was No. 1 singles player all four years, won a City Section singles championship and was runner-up three times.

That was enough to earn scholarship offers from UC Santa Barbara, UC Irvine and Cal. She was also looking at Yale.

The problem was that Cooper had her heart set on UCLA. But Bruin coaches weren’t exactly reciprocating.

“UCLA had everything,” Cooper said. “It’s far enough away from my family where I can be on my own. It has the academics and the tennis. If I went to Yale, it would have been mainly academics. If I went to Santa Barbara, the academics are less than UCLA.”

The academics are important to Cooper, a kinesiology major with thoughts of either going to medical school or into physical therapy.

“I was encouraging her to go to Santa Barbara,” said Hochstadter by phone from Orange County, where he is head pro at the Laguna Niguel Racquet Club. “I figured for four years there, she would be in the top three no matter what. At UCLA, as a walk-on, she never knew who they might bring on.”

The best Cooper could get from UCLA was a chance to earn a scholarship for her second year.

That was good enough.

“It seemed like a challenge,” Cooper said. “I wasn’t intimidated. I felt like I could make the team because a couple of the freshmen coming in on scholarships at the time I was coming in were people I had just beaten in tournaments. So I knew I’d have a place on the team.

“But I didn’t have a set position like everyone else. I had to go out there and try out and find myself a spot and play challenge matches.”

Her first season, Cooper was on the No. 3 doubles unit and anywhere from No. 4 to No. 6 in singles.

Each year she improved, despite a torn arch suffered in her freshman season that bothered her for a year and a half, and a severe ankle sprain that sidelined her for six weeks during her sophomore year.

Burned out at the end of last season, Cooper didn’t pick up a racket all summer, choosing instead to work out six hours a day, either with weights in her hands or running shoes on her feet.

Lighter, stronger and refreshed, she was better than ever. Last fall, she won the Ed Doty UCSB tournament. “I felt,” she said, “like I could compete with anyone there.”

Or anywhere.

Now a senior, Cooper is leading the Bruins into the women’s NCAA tennis championships this week and next at UCLA as the school’s No. 1 player in both singles and doubles.

“She has just rolled along,” Hochstadter said, “with her ability to hit the ball as hard as anybody. Now obviously if that was the whole game, the biggest and strongest would always win. That’s not the whole game. But she has added consistency and confidence. She fooled me.”

Cooper feels she is still fooling people.

“I think I’m underestimated in a lot of coaches’ eyes,” she said. “I think it was because of my style of play. In the past, I could be really on, really hot, or be really bad.”

That’s because Cooper, at 6 feet tall, was a power player who felt she could just stand at the baseline and blow people away. And indeed, when she was on, she could.

Then there was the negative side.

“If I’m a little off,” she said, “I’m going to miss. But I’d keep banging, keep banging. It was the power play. Not much finesse.

“The big change now is that when something’s not working, I’ve learned to mix it up until I can get grooved again. If I get a short ball, in the past I’d come in and bang at it so that the chances of missing were high. But now I might chip it, or drop shot it, or just float it up or something. That all comes from maturity and experience, from being around top players and coaches.”

It’s not surprising that it took Cooper awhile to gain such maturity when you consider that, at 21, it has still been less than a decade since she first held a racket in her hand.

“She’s in the top five among people who can just hit the ball hard,” said Bruin Coach Bill Zaima. “But there are so many good athletes out there who can run down a lot of balls. If you hit the ball as hard as you can six times, somebody might be able to run them down six times. Then you might miss the seventh. That’s what has happened to Allyson a couple of times.

“We’re just trying to have her hit the ball not quite as hard and maybe hit a couple more rockets inside the lines. We also want her to come in on the ball and take advantage of her size. She’s got a really good overhead and her volleys are very much improved.”

In her case, it is almost improvement without precedent.

“She came here as a walk-on,” Zaima said, “was our No. 5 player and now she’s UCLA’s No. 1 player and that’s very, very unusual. I don’t think it will ever happen again because there are now so many good tennis programs nationwide. If you get offered a full ride at Duke, for example, or can take a chance on coming to be a walk-on at UCLA, you’ll probably take the full ride at Duke. I think there’s fewer good walk-ons coming to the strong programs. They’re going to go someplace where they know they can play.”

No matter how she does in the NCAA finals, Cooper plans to go to Europe this summer and try the pro tour.

“I definitely think she can be a pro,” Hochstadter said. “I think she can play right now with anybody from 90th on in the world and possibly beat some of those girls.”

If she does?

“I’ll keep doing it,” she said. “Time runs out on playing tennis. I can always go to med school.”

She’ll have a way to, though, to top what she has done as an undergraduate.

“Allyson is an All-American,” Zaima said, “and that’s a hell of an accomplishment for a walk-on.”

Against all odds and all the well-intended advice, she has become a big fish in a big pond.