Patching Up What Was Torn Apart : Tennis: Tracy Ishii watched her life disintegrate from child prodigy to drug addict. Now the USD freshman tries to put the pieces back together.

Eight years ago, Tracy Ishii was on her way to becoming the next Tracy Austin. At 12, Ishii was ranked second in the nation in the 14-and-under age division. She was beating professional players ranked in the top 100. Agents were calling, asking when she was going to turn pro.

Her father, Bob, was supporting her tennis emotionally and financially. He traveled with her to junior tournaments across the country and hired the prestigious Robert Lansdorp as her private coach.

Ishii had everything going for her.

“I was the perfect kid, a straight-A student, everything,” she said.

Or so everyone thought.

“I had no life,” Ishii said. “I didn’t get to do many things. My tennis was everything. I never really was able to go to dances or parties. I had a tournament every weekend.

“On the outside, everybody thought our family was fine. The cover looked good. On the inside, there was a lot going on.”

The Ishii family was being torn apart by Tracy’s tennis career. Tracy said her mother and father differed on the amount of time and money invested in her tennis future. And while Tracy’s tennis received all of the family’s attention, Tracy’s sister, Laurie, said she was virtually ignored. The Ishiis eventually divorced.

Tracy was shipped to boarding school in Hawaii, where she quit tennis and began to experiment with drugs.

The experiment lasted six years and almost killed her.

Today, Ishii is back on the courts after a six-year absence, playing remarkably well for the University of San Diego Toreros.

In her first collegiate dual match Feb. 1, Ishii defeated Pepperdine freshman Natasha Pospich, 6-1, 6-1, at No. 4 singles.

The second time around, tennis is only a game to Ishii, a 21-year-old freshman at USD. She can laugh after a loss.

The pressure is finally off.

The pressure began building not long after Bob Ishii introduced the game to Tracy at age 7. Soon, Tracy was playing tournaments and beating players older than she.

“I was excited at first, but when I saw what it was doing to my family, I ended up hating it,” she said. “I felt that tennis wasn’t fun anymore. It turned into a job. It was something I dreaded after school.”

But mostly, it was the constant pressure to win that Ishii dreaded.

“It seemed I was never good enough,” she said. “I was playing up (an age group) when I was 12 and ranked second nationally, but it wasn’t good enough. I couldn’t see that, ‘Oh my gosh, I was second out of 128 people.’ I just saw that I wasn’t No. 1. I couldn’t ever be happy.

“It was ingrained into me by my dad. I couldn’t lose to somebody who was lower than me. If I beat somebody who was better than me, I could never lose to them again. I’d have to beat them forever. It was like carrying this big load.”

Bob Ishii, who owns two dental laboratories, acknowledged that he didn’t do much to lift the load.

“I didn’t tell her that I was putting pressure on her to win, but I think she felt it,” he said. “It was done in the wrong way. Probably being too critical was one of the main things I did. You don’t look at the positive things your kids do enough.”

But at the time, Bob Ishii said it was hard to find any perspective.

“As a parent, you don’t realize what you’re doing,” he said. “I realize it now. As I look back, I admit I made a lot of mistakes, but I didn’t know any better. If I knew then what I know now . . .”

Lansdorp, who taught Tracy at his West End Tennis Academy in Torrance, said he never saw her unhappiness. All he saw was a scrappy, tenacious player with loads of potential.

“She would not give up a point,” he said. “It was a battle to try and beat her. She would run everything down. Mentally, she was so brutal. I thought she was going to the pro ranks.”

Ishii was beating future pros Ann Grossman and Stephanie Rehe in junior tournaments. Lansdorp compared Ishii to Austin, whom he coached as a junior.

“Competitively, they were the same,” Lansdorp said. “Austin’s timing was better and she hit her shots a little deeper. But Tracy (Ishii) had all the ingredients to be great.”

But Laurie Ishii, now 23, sensed that her sister had all the ingredients of someone headed for a big fall.

“Tracy had a lot of stress for somebody that young,” Laurie Ishii said. “Her attitude on the court was calm and collected, but she held it all inside.”

That was until the national 14-and-under indoors tournament, when she finally let it out. After losing in the finals to Amy Frazier, now ranked 25th on the pro circuit, Ishii decided she had had enough.

Lansdorp and most of the tennis community was shocked.

“I’ve never had a girl on her way up like that just quit,” he said. “I completely misread the whole family. I had no clue. I thought it was the happiest family. One moment Tracy was there playing tennis, the next moment she was history.”

After years of playing the game by her father’s rules, Ishii lashed out and broke all the rules. She said she began smoking marijuana as an act of rebellion while living in Hawaii. When she returned to Torrance six months later, Ishii moved out of her father’s house and on to harder drugs.

It wasn’t long before Ishii, who was being supported by her father, had dropped out of Palos Verdes High.

“By the time I reached 16, I was basically getting high every single day,” Ishii said.

Suddenly, Ishii’s circle of friends had gone from tennis players to drug dealers. Laurie Ishii was in the same circle.

“She looked up to me because I was such a rebel,” Laurie Ishii said.

Curtis Dadian, a family friend, recalls getting phone calls from Laurie in the middle of the night.

“I’d get down there and there was gunfire going off,” Dadian said.

Said Laurie: “Some of the places Tracy and I went to get drugs . . . We were so stupid. Once we walked through this place with Colombians carrying machine guns. But it didn’t matter to us. Anything to get drugs.

“I was such a negative influence on Tracy. I never wanted to party by myself, so I would call her.”

One night, the gunfire eventually caught Laurie. She was shot and almost killed.

Eventually, Tracy tried to straighten herself out by entering a drug rehabilitation center. But that only made her problem worse.

“Rehab offered me no hope,” she said. “I didn’t want to be that way. I got even angrier after that. I was confused. I ended up doing worse things than I did before. I was snorting heroin and cocaine. Even my good, good friends didn’t know I was doing that. I was physically addicted.”

Said Bob Ishii: “I was helpless. I tried to get her to go back to school. I just wanted her to be like a regular person again. I sent her to psychiatrists, therapists, her and her sister went to three or four rehab centers.”

Finally, Bob Ishii cut off Tracy’s money supply. But that didn’t stop her.

“I started selling, doing anything I could to support my habit,” Ishii said. “I owed a lot of people money. I was in serious debt. I was very convincing with my stories when I borrowed money.”

But Ishii said she had a hard time convincing herself that she was happy.

“I would sit out on my balcony thinking, ‘What am I doing?’ ” she said. “I would ask myself at parties, ‘Why am I here?’ I was never happy. It was this big act. On the inside, you’re hurting so bad. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

Anybody who tried to tell her what she was doing was shut out from her world.

Said Dadian: “I tried to help her a little bit. But you felt like if you did try, she’d push you away even farther.”

Twice, Ishii became so disillusioned with her life that she tried to take it by overdosing.

Laurie, who had become a born-again Christian, tried on several occasions to convert her sister. But Tracy scoffed at the thought of religion helping her.

“I didn’t believe in God,” she said. “I would quit using for a day and I would start throwing up. I knew I had a huge problem on my hands. Because of all the things that had happened to me, I lost my faith in God.

“My sister used to tell me, ‘Jesus loves you.’ I would say, ‘You are so weird.’ I got sick of hearing it and we didn’t talk for six months.”

Then one night, Tracy called her sister from a friend’s house.

“I had gotten into a fight with my boyfriend,” she said. “I had no money. No car. No place to stay. No clothes. Nothing. I called every person I knew for a ride. The phones were all busy, the answering machines were on. I was like, ‘What’s going on?’

“I finally called my sister, but I didn’t expect her to pick me up. She was there in five minutes.”

When Laurie arrived, she barely recognized her sister.

“She looked horrible,” Laurie said. “Her skin was transparent. You could see her veins. She was shaking because she was so strung out. She told me she could barely dial the phone, she was shaking so badly. She had withered down to almost nothing. She must have weighed about 80 pounds. I remember saying, ‘Aren’t you sick of this life?’ ”

The next day, July 4, 1990, Laurie took Tracy to her church and converted her to Christianity.

“I woke up that next morning and felt fine,” Tracy said. “It was this peace inside of me. When I was in rehab, I wanted to quit, but I knew it wasn’t there inside of me. This time, I knew it was totally meant to be. Everything fit together and made sense. I knew I would never be sick again. I never got high again after that.”

Within a month, Ishii was back on the court hitting balls. She began taking lessons from Lansdorp and Bill Dunkle, a tennis pro at the Jack Kramer Club in Palos Verdes.

“I didn’t really have any intention of playing seriously again,” she said. “I just realized, ‘Gosh, I love this.’ And my dad wasn’t pressuring me anymore.”

When Dunkle saw Ishii play, he couldn’t believe she hadn’t picked up a racquet in six years.

“It was amazing to see the timing she had,” he said.

Soon, Ishii began beating some of the top juniors at the Jack Kramer Club, and college coaches starting taking notice. She had finished high school by taking extension courses, and now UCLA, USC and UC Santa Barbara were offering tennis scholarships. However, she decided she needed a smaller, private school.

“I was really scared of going to a school in L.A. area,” she said. “I didn’t want to be near that crowd again.”

After meeting USD players Kara Brady and Laura Richards over the summer, Ishii was convinced USD was the ideal place for her. But by the time she contacted USD, Torero tennis Coach Sherrie Stephens had filled out her roster.

That didn’t matter to Ishii. She told Stephens she would play for free, if she could get admitted to school. She applied late and was denied admission three times. But on her fourth attempt, a spot opened and Ishii was admitted.

Stephens had never heard of Ishii before, but she welcomed her to the team.

“In a way, I have to say there is something spiritual to all this,” Stephens said. “I already had my team. I didn’t want nine players. Every door was closed. We had no money and she couldn’t get admitted.

“But she felt that it was important for her to be at a school this small. Our team is very, very close. It’s very important for her to have that support group on and off the court.”

Ishii said she feels at home.

“I love it here,” she said. “I’ve never seen unity like this. There’s no animosity from the other girls. I thought they may be kind of mad because Sherrie didn’t tell them I was coming. But they’ve all been very nice and helpful. I just feel really comfortable.”

Stephens has heard some of the horror stories from Ishii’s past; she finds them hard to believe.

“It’s a little difficult for me to visualize, because I know her as she is now,” she said. “She’s a very, very sweet, energetic, hard-working person.”

Said Brady: “I look at her now in her little tennis skirt and I would never guess that she did some of those things. She’s the sweetest person. She wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

Ishii said she is learning to adjust to her new lifestyle, but she acknowledges there are still some glitches.

“It’s kind of weird having all these responsibilities--school and tennis,” she said. “This whole thing is stressing me out sometimes. Mostly, it’s still hard for me to go out there and concentrate for two hours on the tennis court.”

But somehow Ishii has been able to maintain her concentration long enough to pull off some big victories. She upset seeded players in the fall All-American and Rolex tournaments, and she beat Pospich after losing to her three times over the summer.

Bob Ishii is close to his daughter again, but he has not been able to bring himself to watch her play.

“If I watch someone else, it doesn’t bother me,” said Bob Ishii, who is supporting Tracy financially again. “I’ve seen her work out. It’s just too hard to her watch her play matches. I’m just happy she’s playing.”

But will she ever play as well as she did eight years ago?

“Comebacks are very tough,” Lansdorp said. “She has to learn to be instinctive again. Now, she has to think about it too much.

“She would be somewhere else if she wouldn’t have quit the game. She’d be in the pros. But on the other hand, she could still be on drugs. I think she turned out OK. She could still make her mark in the pros. But I don’t ever know if she’ll be as good as she could have been.”

Dunkle said the future is up to Ishii.

“Back when she was a top junior, she was a little backboard,” he said. “Her strength is still staying out there all day and grinding out points. But you can’t play that way in women’s tennis anymore. I do see her coming in and taking balls earlier. She could continue to change her game. But it still depends on what she wants to do.”

Ishii said she has no plans beyond playing four years at USD, where Stephens has promised her a scholarship next year.

“I’m not looking very far ahead,” she said. “I’m just very thankful to be alive and feeling well.”