To Turn Pro or Not? Answer Was Easy for Coronado’s Gavaldon

Great thinkers and lawmakers, perhaps an incongruous alliance, spend considerable time contemplating the consequences of athletes turning professional after their junior years of college competition.

You’ve heard the fuss surrounding, for example, the deliberations of one Junior Seau, an aptly named young man from Oceanside who has been employed as a football player at USC and seeks to improve himself by moving to the more lucrative NFL.

Seau ultimately resolved that it was time to be paid by check rather than by room and board, but not before his ponderings had been examined so thoroughly you would think he had been asked to determine the outcome of the SDG&E-SoCal; Edison merger.

The wisdom that must prevail, of course, is that a person cannot be prohibited from making a living in a chosen field, regardless of whether or not athletic eligibility has been exhausted.

This is particularly interesting this week, because another junior from this neighborhood turned professional without accompanying brouhaha and controversy.

“It wasn’t such a big decision,” said The Athlete. “I did it because it was time.”

But Angelica “The Athlete” Gavaldon has little in common with the collegiate behemoths who crave to play for pay in the NFL.

For one thing, Gavaldon did not choose to turn pro after her junior year, but rather during . What’s more, Gavaldon is doing all this while a junior in high school .

Indeed, Gavaldon, all of 16 and a year removed from winning her second CIF championship for Our Lady of Peace, made her professional debut this week in the $150,000 Virginia Slims of Oklahoma. She advanced to the today’s semifinals by defeating Brenda Schultz of the Netherlands, 3-6, 6-4, 7-5, Friday.

Anyone who followed her exploits at the Australian Open would not have been surprised by her decision. She reached the quarterfinals in that tournament, which is a Grand Slam event and not a parochial exercise lost somewhere in the outback.

That tournament was, in fact, the turning point in making the decision now rather than waiting.

“Definitely,” she said by telephone from her hotel room. “On the way home on the airplane, my mom and I were discussing it. We decided I would turn pro after I was in the top 100.”

Why, after all, remain an amateur? To win another CIF championship? To earn a college scholarship?

When Gavaldon arrived home in Coronado, she learned she was ranked 97th in the world.

The time had come.

The time had come to get paid for playing well. By her recollection, she would have pocketed $24,000 for her showing in the Australian Open. As an amateur, she was limited to expense money.

Considering that she played as an amateur in 10 tournaments in 1989, how much money might she already have won?

“Around . . . ,” she said, hesitating and then laughing. “I don’t really know, and I’ll have a fit if I think about it.”

Of course, a 16-year-old cannot worry too much about lost time. The future belongs to her, years and years of it.

Gavaldon’s biggest problem, perhaps, is finding time to study. She is taking literature, American history, art and biology via correspondence courses.

“It’s very hard,” she said. “It’s like going to school, except I don’t have anyone to explain things to me.”

She probably could use an economics course, as well, because she is going to make a lot of money playing this game she started learning eight years ago when the family lived in Tijuana.

“My mom played for fun, and my dad played, too,” she said. “They put me into tennis lessons, and I started playing some tournaments and winning. Everything started getting really serious after I started winning.”

When the family moved to Coronado, Gavaldon kept right on winning.

But Angelica, has it become too serious?

“It’s my career ,” she said. “It has to be serious. But it’s still really fun, and I’m enjoying it.”

But what of those high school days? Football games? Dances? Yearbook pictures?

“You miss out on a lot,” she said, “but I think I’m better off doing this. And I want to be somebody in life.”

And so Angelica Gavaldon’s prof tennis career is on its way. It’s business now, a serious business, but one in which she can seriously have some fun and also make some serious money.

That, in short, is the difference between this week and last week.

“I don’t really think much about it,” Gavaldon said. “Playing tennis is just about the same as a professional or as an amateur. It wasn’t any big decision.”

No big decision at all. Not when the time is right.