Stogner Steps Up to the Pro Ranks : Loyola Marymount Senior to Compete in Manhattan Beach Tennis Tourney

Lynn Stogner, tennis player/violinist, has spent most of her 21 years dealing with strings, and a natural ability laced with dedication has produced an individual accomplished in both fields.

But music has taken a back seat since the 5-foot-5 Stogner, a senior at Loyola Marymount, began preparing for her professional tennis debut. She got one of four wild cards to qualify for the Virginia Slims of Manhattan Beach Aug. 11-19 at the Manhattan Beach Country Club.

“Last Wednesday I found out I got it and I celebrated by running six miles on The Strand,” Stogner laughed. “I thought immediately, ‘I really have to get in shape now.’ ”

Stogner will find out who her opponent is this afternoon when the 32-player qualifying draw is completed. The top four qualifiers will move into the 56-player main draw which offers a $350,000 purse and includes four of the five top-ranked women in the world.

Among them are nine-time Wimbledon champion Martina Navratilova, Wimbledon finalist Zina Garrison, French Open champion Monica Seles and Gabriela Sabatini.

“I’m just excited I got in,” Stogner said after a workout on Wednesday. “I really didn’t expect to, knowing the quality of players in this tournament. I know L.A. (Virginia Slims) is a big one. I’ve always wanted to be in L.A.”

Tournament Director Jan Diamond says choosing the wild cards isn’t easy. She received 25 requests for the four spots.

“I look at their records and see who looks interesting,” Diamond said. “I like the idea of young, local players in the tournament.”

The agile Stogner, whose strengths are a fierce topspin forehand and a tricky backhand slice, says she’ll represent the South Bay well. She believes she’ll have a home-court advantage because she teaches children’s summer clinics at the Manhattan Beach Country Club and often practices there.

“I think I can play with just about anyone out there,” she smiled. “But I have to be realistic. I’m just coming back into the game and I’m not going to be upset at myself if I don’t win. I should do OK, though.”

Stogner was inactive for two months while recovering from carpal tunnel surgery in May on her right hand. The operation was performed to relieve pressure on a nerve in the wrist, which kept her in discomfort all of last season.

“It got kind of scary,” Stogner said. “I lost feeling in my fingers. It wasn’t really painful, but it was more of a nuisance because I couldn’t feel my fingers.”

She says the numbness was nothing compared to a broken arm she suffered in a car accident during her freshman year at Loyola. That injury, three weeks into the tennis season,

kept her out the entire year.

But a tingling sensation wasn’t enough to hamper her performance as Loyola’s No. 3 player last season. In April she won the Independent College Division title at Ojai by defeating UC San Diego’s Christine Behrens in straight sets.

“I really didn’t expect it,” Stogner said. “I knew I was going to give it everything I had. Even growing up in Texas I heard about the famous Ojai Tournament, so I was prepared and confident I would do well--but not win it.”

Stogner was also named the most valuable player on a Loyola team which placed third to Pepperdine and the University of San Diego in the West Coast Conference and which won the Independent College Division team trophy at Ojai.

Jenny Knotts, Stogner’s Loyola teammate and summer workout partner, says Stogner played a huge role in the team’s success.

“She keeps things to herself, but I know her hand really bothered her at times,” Knotts said. “She always kept trying, though. She always tried real hard and that’s why she did so well. Now she’s really working out hard to prepare for the Slims.”

Stogner practices daily with Loyola Coach Jamie Sanchez from 6 a.m. to 7:45 a.m. at El Segundo Park. She receives arm therapy in Redondo Beach, hits balls with a friend then practices again in the afternoon with Sanchez from 4 to 6. She follows that with a run on The Strand, near her summer residence in Manhattan Beach.

Sanchez believes Stogner has several weapons that opponents must reckon with. “The most noticeable thing about Lynn is that she has a lot of patience and stamina. But she also hits excessive topspin on her forehand and has good slice on her backhand so people have to deal with two types of spins,” he said.

Stogner’s father, Gene, started her in the sport at the age of 4. Gene Stogner is a longtime tennis pro at a New Mexico club, just minutes from the family’s El Paso, Tex., home.

As a junior player on the Southwest tennis circuit, Stogner was ranked in the top four in every age division. In her senior year at Coronado High in El Paso, she placed third in the state regionals.

Stogner turned down scholarships from New Mexico State, Houston and Brown to play at Loyola. She said the moment she saw the small Westchester campus, she knew that’s where she wanted to go.

“Once I saw LMU I stopped looking elsewhere,” Stogner said. “I wanted to go to a small school in a big city and I wanted to go into film and play tennis. Loyola was perfect.”

Stogner, a communication arts major with an emphasis on film production, works hardest at tennis because she has a scholarship, but it’s not her life.

For example, earlier this year she worked on two commercials--for the movie “Total Recall” and for Ford Motor Co.--as a free-lance production assistant. She also plays the violin in Loyola’s chamber orchestra. She took up the instrument in fifth grade because the school curriculum demanded it.

“We had a choice of taking music appreciation or orchestra so I joined the orchestra,” Stogner said. “My mom couldn’t believe it. I was always the jock, the kid playing in the dirt, not the kid playing the violin.”

But the young jock blossomed in that classical environment. In 1984 her high school orchestra won the International Youth Music Festival in Vienna. Five of the top youth symphony orchestras in the United States were chosen to compete in the event, which featured groups from all over the world.

“We won a big, crystal trophy and we played five concerts in Austria and Germany after winning,” Stogner said. “It was like a little concert tour.”

Stogner says playing the violin helps her release tension. During holidays she teams with her cousins, who play various instruments, for family mini-concerts.

She says the only similarity between playing tennis and playing the violin is that “they both take a lot of concentration.”

The biggest difference is that unlike tennis, playing the violin helps her relax, something she has put on hold as she prepares for the tournament of her life.