Fair Play From a Pretty Fair Player : Agoura Hills’ Boisclair Is as Good a Sport as She Is a Sportswoman

It is difficult to say why Erin Boisclair’s opponents fear her on the tennis court. Maybe it’s the way she wields her racket and towers over other 13-year-olds.

Boisclair is 5-foot-8 and growing. But if her stature isn’t enough to inspire awe, she backs it with an oral punch.

“A lot of people--like my dad--say I intimidate people.”

Pow.

“My biggest asset is my weapons.”

Bang.

“I’ve never lost to anybody (ranked) below me. I could be top five in the nation. I can’t be below eight.”

Smash.

“My shortest goal is to get on the national team. But I’m looking to become pro. Definitely.”

Watch it, girls. Erin’s serving again.

Big, strong, supremely confident and coming off an impressive performance in the United States Tennis Assn. National Junior Championships in which she reached the doubles final and the quarterfinal round in singles, the Agoura Hills resident can back up the talk.

She pounds the ball with her “weapons”--deep ground strokes, a blurring cross-court forehand--and she makes others her age appear weak and frail. She also makes them suspicious.

“They don’t believe I’m 13, until they get to know me,” Boisclair said. “Now they just joke about it.”

Joking usually comes after the girls discover another of Boisclair’s qualities: kindness. Once they get to know her, Boisclair’s opponents view her as someone other than an on-court terminator.

“I guess it’s because I’ve grown and gotten a lot stronger,” said Boisclair, who has sprouted an additional four inches since last year. “I guess I do intimidate people just by my presence. But I’m nice on the court.”

In the 16 months since she made the jump from local events to national and international tournaments, Boisclair has not won a championship--but she has been given three prestigious sportsmanship awards. In a sport that emphasizes graciousness, that’s almost as good as winning.

Boisclair is not particularly demonstrative. She prefers to play down her determination. In fact, she might rank No. 1 in her age group for sportsmanship. But there’s no question she won’t be satisfied until she’s No. 1, period.

She practices three to five hours a day, usually seven days a week and mostly on private courts with adults.

Boisclair is up at 6 a.m. each day and takes a two-mile run--six laps around the block. Then she heads to school. When the bell rings at 2:19 p.m.--dismissal time at Lindero Canyon Middle School--Boisclair heads for the courts.

Boisclair does take time out to study, enough to maintain a grade-point average of better than 3.0.

After her early-morning run each day, Boisclair does wind sprints. Just how far she sprints, she’s not sure. But she starts in front of the Boisclair house, tears past the Davies house and breaks stride in front of the Seiden residence.

Neighbors seem to play an important role in Boisclair’s tennis career. It was the Burtons, who live across the street, who introduced her to the game at age 9. She’s been hooked since. “I (envision) myself traveling and stuff,” she said. “I (envision) myself at the U.S. Open--being like a Jimmy Connors. I really like the way crowds get into him. I like Chris Evert too.”

Boisclair is not being prodded in her quest for greatness. “I never pushed her,” said her father, Bruce, a former major league baseball player. “When she got old enough to where the kids got into sports, she wanted to do it.”

Erin agrees, saying, “They don’t pressure me at all. And they won’t when I don’t want to play anymore--which will never be. They didn’t start me in it. My dad had no clue about tennis.”

Nonetheless, Erin’s competitive spark pleases Bruce Boisclair, who played center field and first base for the New York Mets from 1974-79 and allows that it is nice to have another athlete around the house.

Whether it’s tennis, basketball or a board game, Bruce and Erin go to war. And Bruce, who batted .263 in 410 major league games, is still somewhat of a wild man at 40. “When we go ice skating,” said his wife, Dolores, “he starts checking people.”

Erin and Bruce, 6-3 and 190 pounds, agree they drove Dolores crazy wrestling in the house during last winter’s rains.

“I’m built exactly like my dad, I think,” Erin said. “My sister (Britt, 9) hates sports. She likes to stay home and play with dolls. My dad and I are competitive in everything. Whenever we get on the court, we can’t even play each other, it’s so competitive.”

Bruce agrees that Erin’s a chip off the block and says the older she gets, the more alike they are. “It’s fantastic,” he said. “Erin, I think, is a really cool kid.”

Cool, but with a fire burning inside for tennis. “She’s going to be big and strong in whatever she does,” Dolores said. “She’s a driven kid. It’s like she’s got the wrath of God hanging over her shoulders.”

In two years playing national events, Boisclair has made a steady, impressive rise. In her first big event, the 1992 Florida Easter Bowl, she was eliminated in a first-round match.

Two stops later, in a clay-court tournament in France, Boisclair finished 17th and earned her first sportsmanship award. The next event, the national indoor championships in St. Louis, Boisclair again lost in the first round but won the consolation tournament. She played 12 matches in six days and won her second sportsmanship award.

By the end of the year, the USTA had ranked Boisclair (still 12 at the time) 14th in the country in the girls’ 14-and-under division. The SCTA rated her fourth in Southern California and gave her its 1992 sportsmanship award.

This year, she was seventh in the Easter Bowl and national clay-court tournaments. Then she won her first championship--the SCTA Sectional 14-and-under singles title in June--and was told she would be seeded fifth in the USTA Junior Nationals two weeks ago.

But because of a computer foul-up, she was seeded ninth, and it cost her in the quarterfinals. She would have faced the fourth-seeded player in that round, but instead, third-seeded Kristina Triska beat Boisclair, 7-6 (8-6), 6-2.

In doubles, Boisclair and Julie Ditty of Ashland, Ky., were seeded third and reached the final against top-seeded Tammy Encina and Christa Grey. Boisclair and Ditty lost, 5-7, 7-6 (8-6), 6-3, in a four-hour match interrupted by a 75-minute rain delay.

Without the delay, tournament chairwoman Julie Wrege thought Boisclair’s team would have won. “They had the momentum and they were getting it together,” Wrege said. “Erin’s a beautiful player. I was impressed with the quality of her strokes. She’s got a classic swing, and she was probably one of the smarter players in the tournament.”

Boisclair said she has learned from the loss to Triska. “She’s really little and she’s one of those players who doesn’t have much power but just gets it back,” Boisclair said. “My power got me back into the match. But when someone retrieves (every ball), I’m not able to maintain my pace. I’m working on that right now.”

Wrege expects Boisclair to be one of the top-seeded players in the national tournament in suburban Atlanta next year--assuming she doesn’t make the jump to 16s.

“I’m really impressed with her,” Wrege said. “And she was quite a lady on the court.”