UC IRVINE NOTEBOOK : Sophomore Tennis Whiz Thinks Success

Ali Yoshimoto walked off the tennis court at UC Irvine a winner again last week.

Mark Henry, Anteater assistant coach, reached her first and broke the big news.

“Hey, that’s eight in a row,” he said.

Yoshimoto had no idea.

“I hadn’t been paying attention,” she said. “I said ‘It is?’ I’m pretty excited.”

Really, she is.

It’s just that she’s been too busy to notice her winning streak has now reached nine consecutive matches and that she has won 14 of her past 16 going into Friday’s match at Fresno State.

And just what has been racing through her mind lately?

“The color of the sky?” she offers. “What I’m going to have for dinner? Sometimes I catch myself drifting.”

Yoshimoto, a sophomore who plays No. 4 singles, has been winning this season by letting her mind wander where it might. She’s tried it the other way and all it did was give her a headache.

For Yoshimoto, it’s better to look at the little picture--this next serve, for instance.

Fretting about the score or how many consecutive matches she’s won or lost only gave her a throbbing pain in the temples. It happened during particularly intense matches when Yoshimoto was a freshman.

She wasn’t eager to have it happen again, so she tried thinking about other things.

“Otherwise I get too carried away,” she said. “I started thinking, ‘I can’t lose this match. I’ve got to win.’ ”

Watching her play, it’s difficult to know what’s going through Yoshimoto’s mind on the court. Winning or losing, she plays without emotion.

Inner strength, Irvine Coach Doreen Irish calls it.

“I’ve always thought of myself as quiet,” Yoshimoto said. “I think a lot on the court. I’m always thinking, thinking. Sometimes I catch myself blurting things out loud.”

Sometimes she surprises herself when she does. “Did I say that?” she wonders.

Maybe her quiet approach to the game comes from her early years playing age-group tennis. She lost more often than not when she was starting out and usually left the courts wondering why she was playing at all.

But she stuck with it and progressed quickly. By the time she was at Alhambra High School, she was 14th-ranked among girls 18-and-under in Southern California.

As a freshman at Irvine, she played No. 2 singles, finding it more intense and more stressful than any level she’d played.

She finished the season with a 13-25 record and was voted the team’s most improved player.

This season, Irish moved Yoshimoto to the No. 4 spot and the change has been good for her confidence and record.

“At first I wasn’t exactly excited to play No. 4,” she said. “(But) it’s given me a chance to grow. I can work on things with not quite as much pressure at No. 2.”

So far, so good for Yoshimoto, who is is 16-8 going into the Fresno State match.

“Actually, I’ve been trying not to think about it,” she said.

Record-breaker: Maria Akraka broke the school record for the women’s 1,500 meters in Saturday’s track and field meet against Brigham Young, Cal State Fullerton and Air Force.

Her 4-minute 14.45-second mark broke the old record of 4:16.73 set by Jill Harrington in 1987 and qualified Akraka for the NCAA championship meet May 28-June 1 at Eugene, Ore.

Akraka is a senior from Stockholm, Sweden.

The men’s and women’s teams compete next in the Fresno Relays on Saturday at Fresno City College.

Baseball notes: In the Anteaters’ three-game series against Fullerton last week, they pounded Titan pitching for 20 runs, but gave up 41. Things got so bad Saturday that outfielder Ray Walker made his pitching debut in a 22-12 loss. Walker retired the only batter he faced.

The Anteaters are 17-17, 1-2 in conference play going into this week’s three-game series against 24th-ranked Fresno State on Friday (7 p.m.), Saturday (7) and Sunday (1) at Anteater Field.

Junior third baseman Bill Bardens, hitting .321, remains sidelined with a strained abdomen muscle.

Here’s the good news: Bryant Winslow, a senior first baseman-designated hitter, needs one more home run to tie the school record of nine in a season. Five Anteaters have hit nine, the last was Gene Roumimper in 1986. No. 8 by Winslow gave Irvine an 8-7 victory over Fullerton in the 13th inning Thursday.

Al Rodriguez, a senior shortstop, returned from a back injury to go five for 14 against Fullerton.

Anteater Notes

Irvine’s golf team won the Anteater Invitational on Monday, its third title in the last four tournaments. Lyle Archer, a junior, was the tournament medalist, defeating teammate Adam Horodyski, a sophomore, on the first playoff hole. . . . The volleyball team, idle since March 16, plays a nonconference match at La Verne at 7:30 tonight. The 18th-ranked Anteaters are 3-13, 3-10 in the Western Intercollegiate Volleyball Assn.