Amy Lightner Shines Brightly in Athletics and Academics

When lightning strikes, it seemingly chooses its targets at random and commands respect because it cannot be controlled or stopped.

When Amy Lightner strikes, she chooses her targets carefully, and she has earned respect for her tireless efforts and accomplishments in four years at Point Loma High School.

The California Interscholastic Federation, the state governing body for high school athletics, recently recognized Lightner as its girls’ scholar-athlete of the year. The honor was based on Lightner’s No. 1 spot on a list of 520 graduates in this year’s senior class at Point Loma and on her No. 1 position on the girls’ tennis team her senior year.

Lightner, who will turn 18 on July 3, said the honor surprised her. Finalists from San Diego also included Tracy Gibbs of Bonita Vista and Jennifer Moore of Mira Mesa, both of whom are soccer players. In the boys’ competition, local finalists included Erik Bliss of Helix, football, and Andrew Castonguay of El Cajon Valley, water polo.

“I had to laugh when I found out I got it,” Lightner said. “I thought there must be someone who was a better athlete, but not with better grades. The fact that I was taking hard classes really made a difference.”

Lightner is the first to acknowledge that her performance in the classroom, not necessarily on the tennis court, helped catapult her into the position of California’s best in the delicate balance of academics and athletics.

As her judicious study habits paved the way to her CIF recognition, her tennis skills have likewise made a difference in her being accepted at Stanford.

“Tennis helped me get into school because it takes so much more (to be accepted) than (academics),” she said.

To read about her educational and sporting honors is time-consuming. On Senior Awards Night alone, her name was called on 16 occasions. Her grade-point average is 4.42, and sometime next month, she will know if her grades from her course load of advanced placement and college classes will allow her to graduate from college in three years.

Lightner made the varsity tennis team all four years and was team captain her sophomore and senior years. Mary Watson, who has coached the girls’ tennis team at Point Loma for nine years, oversaw Lightner’s progress.

“It was the first time I had anyone make (varsity) their first year,” Watson said. “Amy concentrated (on tennis) and played a lot in the off-season. She worked her way up the ladder, and in her senior year she was undisputed No. 1. She was always able to win.”

Watson recalled how Lightner would watch and learn how the best players operated.

“I could see how she was computing and things were clicking in her head,” Watson said. “She’d watch them and learn by their successes and mistakes.”

In addition to tennis, Lightner played on the badminton team her sophomore and junior years and added soccer to her repertoire as a sophomore. With her schedule already full--she also works at her father’s law firm, was co-president of the school’s Key Club, was a member of the mother-daughter philanthropic Mad Caps Club and sails when she gets the chance--she was forced to quit soccer after one season. Grades were her priority, and her schedule wouldn’t allow for another extracurricular activity.

Only one goal eluded her through high school.

“I’d have to say that I really did accomplish everything that I set out to do, all but the CIF semifinals,” she said.

This past season, Lightner, a baseline player whose highest San Diego ranking was 12th in 18s at the end of last year, lost in the quarterfinals of the San Diego Section 3-A singles competition.

Local tournaments did not offer easier matches.

“There’s some pretty insane competition in San Diego,” she said. “So many of the players (here) are nationally and sectionally ranked, it was very frustrating, because I’d get some ranked player a lot of times in the early rounds. But I learned a lot from playing them.”

She reached the pinnacle of her high school athletic career in the quarterfinals of the section’s 3-A team playoffs, in which Point Loma beat heavily favored Bonita Vista, 4-3. The Pointers lost in the semifinals to Torrey Pines, 5-2.

“I’ll always remember beating Bonita,” Lightner said. “No one ever thought we had enough talent to beat them. We surprised a lot of people. We had a lot of depth, not just one or two great players.”

Lightner first picked up a tennis racket when she was 9, began playing more regularly during eighth grade, then had a private coach, Angel Lopez from the San Diego Tennis and Racquet Club, for her last three years in high school.

“(Tennis) has made me a more efficient person,” she said. “Without it, I probably would have (goofed around), watching TV and stuff. The best thing about playing tennis is that all my classes in high school were so hard, advanced placement and college classes, that I needed something to take my mind off the stress. It was my stress outlet.”

Academic tension will surely follow her at Stanford, but she will cope with it by playing tennis on the intramural level. The Stanford women’s tennis team won its third consecutive National Collegiate Athletic Assn. title last month, and Lightner isn’t quite ready for that level.

“I’m not trying to be a pessimist, but they recruit all over the country,” she said. “So many girls can’t even make the varsity team.”

Though she’s undecided on her career direction, Lightner has narrowed her choices. Well, sort of.

“I like biology a lot. I like math and statistics, but I would like to study economics. And political science interests me, too. There just aren’t that many courses that I dislike.”