Triple Threat : Smith, Portnoy and Pospich Provide Calabasas Tennis Club With Well-Rounded Approach for the USTA National Finals

Tennis instructor Paul Hoback let out a quick, nervous laugh when asked who is the better tennis player--Thousand Oaks’ Kirstin Smith, Granada Hills’ Alisha Portnoy or Calabasas’ Natasha Pospich.

“I won’t touch that one,” he said, laughing some more. “If I want to live, I won’t touch that one.”

That’s understandable. Tennis balls hit by irate or offended teen-agers can be dangerous.

Hoback coaches Smith, Portnoy and Pospich at the Calabasas Park Tennis Club. And though they live in different cities and have different styles, all three enjoy uncommon success.

And all three will be in Charleston, W. V., today to compete in the United States Tennis Assn. National Championships, a seven-day tournament that features the nation’s top 128 players.

Last season, Pospich ranked 38th in the nation for 14-and-unders, Smith was 47th in the 16-and-under division and Portnoy, because of a poor showing at the nationals, slid to 57th.

Each is expected to finish even stronger this year. Smith and partner Laura Richards of Vista finished second in the USTA National Clay Court doubles championships two weeks ago while Portnoy won the consolation championship of the Southern California Tennis Assn. Sectional tournament in June.

And Pospich, despite being a year younger than the others, is ranked ahead of both by the SCTA.

So, Hoback was being more sincere than diplomatic when he said, “They are all very even, any of them could beat the other on any given day.”

Kirstin Smith was trying to explain why her school friends call her “spaz.”

“I’m like our school mascot,” said Smith, a senior at Thousand Oaks High. “At football games, I spray my hair florescent green.”

Smith’s hair is its natural blonde during tennis matches, but her nickname sticks because of what she calls, “my normal, spasmodic stroke.”

Smith’s aggressiveness borders on the frantic, but it wasn’t long ago when she played timidly, rarely rushing the net. Her defensive play wasn’t so much a strategy, but a way to avoid being hit by a 80-m.p.h. forehand.

“I felt intimidated,” she said.

But Smith was forced to the net when she started playing doubles competitively and quickly adapted to the fast-paced play. Smith and Kimberly Chang of Mission Viejo formed the second-ranked 16-and-under doubles team in the SCTA last year and Smith teamed with Thousand Oaks’ Rachel Collins to win the Southern Section doubles championship last fall.

Smith and Richards beat the top-seeded team in the semifinals of the clay court championships and will probably be seeded in the top four at the nationals.

And her newly found aggressiveness could translate into singles success as well at the nationals.

“My doubles play is helping me with singles. I know I can win now,” Smith said. “It’s not being cocky. But now I know I can play with the top players.”

Alisha Portnoy is both uneasy and excited about the nationals.

Her apprehension stems from three consecutive losses at last year’s tournament, which triggered a season-long slump.

Her enthusiasm comes from the sectional tournament in June, when she beat three top-10 players on her way to the consolation championship.

“That was the best tournament I’ve ever played in,” Portnoy said.

She needed the boost. After her quick exit in the nationals last year, Portnoy took a month off and then cruised through her junior season at Granada Hills High. Although she entered the City Section playoffs as one of the favorites, she lost in the quarterfinals.

She believes the hiatus hurt her.

“I didn’t come back well,” Portnoy said. “I had a slump for a few months, really for a lot of months. In April, I started playing up to where I can play.

“The nationals was one of my worst tournaments, but the sectionals was one of my best.”

Hoback admires the competitive drive in Portnoy that enabled her to eventually bounce back. “She’s a great fighter. You never get easy points off her,” he said.

But her competitive fires sometimes threaten to consume her, Hoback said, and she is still learning to control the mood swings that sometimes rock her performance. Her success at the nationals may hinge on her ability to remain consistent.

“I’m looking forward to playing hard and getting some good wins,” Portnoy said.

Natasha Pospich was the sixth-ranked girl in the SCTA’s 14-and-under division last year, but she was expected to have a rough transition into the 16-and-under division.

The 14s are fun, she thought, but the 16s are for players about to enter college.

Pospich, a sophomore at Calabasas High, plays like she is ready to start college. During a spring tournament in Florida, she beat two players ranked in the top 40 nationally, then beat the No. 10- and No. 1-seeded players in a Long Beach tournament in April.

She also advanced to the round of 16 in the consolation bracket of the USTA hard courts championship in July.

While Smith’s strength is her physical play and Portnoy’s is her competitiveness, Pospich finds that a happy medium works best.

“Natasha has a little bit of both of them in her,” Hoback said. “She can overpower and she has become mentally strong. She doesn’t have a weakness, nothing that stands out.”

Pospich is the fifth-ranked player in the SCTA--whom many believe to be the most competitive section in the nation--and she is ranked ahead of both Portnoy and Smith.

“I want to see if I can get a few good wins and get past the third round,” Pospich said. “Hopefully, I can get a good ranking.”

All three hope to play for a top Division I college after high school. “I would be disappointed in myself as a coach if they didn’t all get scholarships to top-20 schools,” Hoback said.

But none seem concerned about proving to anyone who is the best of the three.

“We root for each other,” Portnoy said.

And off the court, they can be as wild and carefree as any group of teen-agers.

At a recent tournament in Florida, they wanted to go for a joy ride in one of the hotel’s golf carts, but rational thinking eventually prevailed.

“We thought about it, but then we didn’t do it. We could have been kicked out of the tournament,” Pospich said.

So the three amigas found another threesome to form a six-pack, jammed into a borrowed golf cart-- borrowed, not stolen, Pospich emphasizes--and took off on a two-mile drive.

Perhaps, then, there is safety in numbers. And the numbers for the threesome should only get better as they climb through the national ranks.