Tennis With an Attitude : Taft’s Brahna Pastorini Has Ability, and She Knows It

Warming up to play in the City Section team tennis playoffs last month, Brahna Pastorini twisted her ankle and collapsed.

More painful to her than the injury was her opponent’s reaction.

“The girl was laughing at me,” said Pastorini, a senior at Taft High in Woodland Hills. “That really just ticked me off.”

As Taft Coach Marvin Jones helped carry his star off the court, Pastorini told him not to forfeit the match.

“Mr. Jones, I’m not going to give up,” she said. “She laughed at me, and I hate that.”

After icing her ankle for 10 minutes and taping it, Pastorini hobbled back to the court, where she quickly dismissed her opponent, Nicole Adams of Hamilton, 6-1, 6-1. And Adams was no longer laughing, just questioning Pastorini’s line calls.

“Whatever,” Pastorini told her. “Score says all.”

But score does not say all about Taft’s top player, who, in frustration, used to smash her legs with her racket.

Score also says nothing about why she has used her racket as an ax, trying to strike down poles after missing a drop volley.

Or why, fed up with her play, she once hurled her racket over the net, nearly hitting an opponent.

That from someone who is 41-0 since her sophomore year, won last year’s City Section Division 4-A individual championship and will defend her title today at 2 p.m. at the Racquet Centre in Studio City.

Jones, who has helped Pastorini rein in her frustrations, believes there is a possible explanation for her temper.

“She has this inner anger regarding her father not being around, not being supportive,” Jones said. “That has been a main concern of hers since she’s been at Taft.”

Pastorini’s father, Dan, a former NFL player, has not had a close relationship with his daughter. After separating from June Wilkinson, Brahna’s mother, in 1977, he moved to Big Bear and stayed out of his daughter’s life. She says they had their first telephone conversation when she was 7, and the next three years later.

Each time, Wilkinson called Dan and put Brahna on the phone.

“She didn’t want me growing up hating my father,” Brahna said. “But I didn’t even know who my father was. Dan Pastorini was just a name to me. It wasn’t like if I saw him walking down the street I could pick him out.”

But others could. Pastorini had a successful 13-year career in the NFL, with stints at Houston, Philadelphia and with the Rams and Raiders. He was a member of the Oakland Raiders’ 1980 Super Bowl championship team, and later was a professional drag racer.

Brahna, an only child who lived with her mother and grandmother in Sherman Oaks, rarely saw her father as a youngster.

“I would have loved to have been around her more,” he said from Vail, Colo. “But unfortunately, she lives (in California) and I live here. I don’t think it’s different than any other divorce situation.”

When Brahna was 13, Wilkinson, a long-time actress and former Playboy magazine model, was cast in a show in Toronto that was to last six months. She asked Dan, 44, if Brahna could temporarily live with him. He agreed.

By then, Dan was remarried and living in Houston. He said he enjoyed getting to know his daughter and soon learned of her tennis ability.

He arranged for a coach to work with her and began occasionally going to her matches.

But Brahna decided after three months that she was not happy living in Houston and moved back to Sherman Oaks to live with her grandmother, Lilly Wilkinson.

But Lilly developed liver cancer and died when Brahna was 15.

“I had my defenses up,” Brahna said of her grandmother’s death. “I mean, no one could get close to me. I’d just go off to my little corner and read.”

But she stuck with tennis, her one escape.

“That was the only time I felt peace,” she said. “I’d go out there wanting to win for her and I could get my anger out. I would be pounding balls. I’d just see that ball and I’d be so mad at God for taking my grandmother away.”

That rage has contributed to Brahna’s success on the court. After losing in the City semifinals her sophomore season, she returned last year to earn Taft’s No. 1 singles spot and beat teammate Julia Feldman in the City final.

Pastorini also plays nearly every weekend in U.S. Tennis Assn. tournaments.

Sometimes, however, her intense desire to win has been interpreted as arrogance.

“She’s very good,” said Marit Kraim, a junior from Chatsworth who was shut out by Pastorini in a match this season. “But she’d be even better if she didn’t have such a big attitude. She thinks of herself as the best. It might be good to have that sort of confidence, but she overdoes it, and looks down on the other person.

“When I was warming up against her, she was talking to her other teammates behind her, going, ‘This will be easy.’ ”

While her mother finishes a six-month run in a play in Edmonton, Canada, Brahna is living with Gene Malin, her private coach, and his wife. Malin said he often tells Pastorini to be more courteous on the court.

“I point it out and show her how detrimental (discourtesy) can be,” Malin said. “She wants to be a pro, but there are certain aspects you have to get over. You have to get tougher mentally.”

Pastorini’s mother is due home soon, if not for long, and she is looking forward to that. And recently, she and her father talked and Brahna came away surprised.

“I found out stuff that I didn’t know before,” she said. “He was saying how he really does care for me and that he’s going to love me no matter what. I never knew he cared that much. It sort of made me feel that I was somewhat wanted by him.”

Pastorini, 17, who maintains a 2.6 grade-point average, wants to play for UCLA next season, but said the school has not contacted her. She has received recruiting letters from Stanford, Penn State and Haverford.