A Couple Changes Paying Off

The mission this fall in one of the top girls’ tennis leagues was to hire coaches.

Only Windy Vining at Alemany High returned to her coaching position in the Mission League.

Flintridge Sacred Heart hired Ron Zambrano, a teaching pro at Fremont Park Tennis Center in Glendale and the boys’ tennis coach at St. Francis High, to take over for Andreas Weyermann.

Kelly Edwards, who played at Cal State Northridge, replaced Jennifer Dohr at Harvard-Westlake.

Adi Hyttenberg, an instructor at Northridge Tennis Club, has stepped in for Andy Berenson at Chaminade.

Louisville replaced Kirstin Smith with Brad Sceney, a teaching pro at Calabasas Tennis and Swim Club.

Notre Dame found two people to take the place of Lynn Izakowitz. Husband-and-wife coaches Bill and Ruth Kolarik are co-owners and operators of the Warner Center Tennis Club.

The couple, married for 20 months, met at the club.

“I gave her a tennis lesson,” Bill recalls with a laugh.

The sport has continued to be a central part of the couple’s lives. They are in the midst of refurbishing their home, but the Notre Dame girls’ tennis team has been their main project.

The Knights face formidable league competition, including traditionally strong Southern Section programs at Harvard-Westlake, a Division III power, and Chaminade, a Division IV challenger.

The Kolariks’ mission this season was to ensure the team’s competitiveness. From all appearances, they have accomplished that goal.

With Bill serving as Notre Dame’s varsity coach and with Ruth as an assistant and junior varsity coach, the Knights are 10-6, including a 6-4 record in league play, and appear headed to the playoffs for the first time. They were 6-11 last season, with a 5-8 mark in league.

The Knights’ losses this year have come against Burbank, Campbell Hall and twice to Chaminade and twice to Harvard-Westlake.

“What my expectations of the team were, they’ve been able to exceed them by far,” Bill Kolarik said. “I’m really proud of the girls. I want them to feel their hard work has paid off.”

Notre Dame lost, 10-8, to Harvard-Westlake, The Times’ top-ranked team in the region and the No. 2 team in Division III rankings, on Oct. 21.

The Knights fell by the same margin in their second match against Chaminade, ranked fifth in Division IV, which had beaten Notre Dame, 14-4, on Oct. 5.

“This team gets better and better as we play more matches,” BillKolarik said. “I’ve noticed it and so have the other coaches.”

Michelle Penez, a senior who sometimes competes in junior tournaments, plays No. 1 singles for the Knights. The No. 2 player is sophomore Liz Crane, who has played tennis for only a year but has shown rapid improvement.

Dawn McGaffee, Notre Dame’s senior class president, is No. 3 singles player. H Fehn and Lindsey Warren make up the top doubles team.

The Knights have improved with the help of the Kolariks’ Woodland Hills club. Instead of practicing at school, where the team squeezed onto four courts, the players have taken advantage of 13 courts and instruction provided by staff members. Home matches are held at Warner Center Tennis Club.

“If Notre Dame wanted to have a really competitive team against schools like Harvard-Westlake and Chaminade, they needed a place where they could practice more,” said Bill Kolarik, who added that teaching high school players was different than instructing top-flight junior players.

“You have to treat these kids different. They’re not as serious as kids that sleep and live tennis, so it’s a challenge to find the right balance of fun and teaching and to be able to put out a team that competes well.”

It is a challenge the Kolariks and the Knights have met head on.

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The Marmonte League isn’t standing quite as tall as usual this season.

“I don’t think anyone in our league could win [a Southern Section title],” said Coach Stuart Limbert of Agoura (10-9, 9-3), who before the season was aiming for a league title and hoped to take the Chargers deep into the playoffs.

“I thought this was going to be the year for my team, but it just didn’t happen that way.”

Many top players at the upper echelon Marmonte schools decided to cut back their playing time for school competition or decided not to play at all. Graduation has also taken its toll.

Westlake (14-4, 12-0) has been saved by the depth of a varsity that went 22-1 and a junior varsity that was 17-1 last season.

“But we’re down,” Coach Connie Flanderka of Westlake said. “We’re not bad, by any means, but the girls realize we’re not the team we were last year.”

Simi Valley, the other team in the top echelon of the league the last few years, lost eight of its top nine players to graduation. Despite their losses, the Pioneers (15-5, 9-3) are headed for a surprising second-place finish.

Parity is the paramount description of the league, which lacks marquee matchups and is missing top individual players.

“It gives every team in the league a chance against all the other teams,” said Coach Nancy Garrison of Newbury Park (7-12, 4-8).

“It’s kind of a good news, bad news situation because it makes things more competitive. But if you don’t play that top competition, you don’t improve as much, either. And also you lose that chance to play against the real quality teams and players, and see what you could be.”

Being all they can be is the primary focus of Marmonte teams.

“I don’t want take anything away from the players this year,” Flanderka said. “I’ve seen improvement by all the teams when they’ve played, and by my own team, too, in the second round, and that’s what you want to see.

“You want to make sure that there’s improvement and that the kids have fun. If you’ve done that, you have to say that you’ve had a good season, no matter where you end up.”

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The Top 10

Rankings of region tennis teams

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RK School (League) Rec. 1 Harvard-Westlake (Mission) 14-2 2 Calabasas (Frontier) 16-3 3 Westlake (Marmonte) 14-4 4 Burroughs (Foothill) 13-1 5 Granada Hills (West Valley) 13-0 6 Simi Valley (Marmonte) 15-5 7 Burbank (Foothill) 12-2-1 8 Buena (Channel) 14-5 9 La Reina (Tri-Valley) 11-4 10 San Fernando (Valley Mission) 13-0

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