This Recruiting Job Pays Off for Hilt

Jenny Hilt, Long Beach State’s women’s tennis coach, admits she still is a little behind in the recruiting game. But she couldn’t have done a better job of landing a pair of impressive freshmen if she really had tried.

At this time last year, Anastasia and Alena Dvornikova were living in Egypt and playing club tennis while considering college in the U.S. Hilt had no idea who they were until the sisters contacted her last May through an e-mail.

“The first time we saw each other was at the airport,” Anastasia Dvornikova said of the sisters’ meeting with Hilt. “I don’t know, it was the way Jenny wrote her e-mail and the attitude she had. We liked that.”

Said Hilt: “I don’t know what it is that I said. They asked a lot of questions about college and education and I just tried to be as upfront as I could be.”

The sisters have been an incredible find for the 49ers, who are 20-2 with a 15-match winning streak and are the top-seeded team in the Big West tournament beginning Thursday in Ojai. Long Beach opens Friday against the winner of the Cal State Fullerton-Utah State match.

Anastasia Dvornikova took over the No. 1 singles position midway through the season and has a 20-2 record. Alena is 19-3 at No. 4 singles, and the sisters have a 19-3 doubles record. Because of them, Long Beach is having its best season and could be headed for its first NCAA tournament berth.

“They have definitely added something that was missing in the program,” Hilt said. “At the same time, we had a pretty solid base to start. We have two seniors [Mandy Carvalho and Sophie Han] who are pretty incredible players.

“But they definitely were two missing pieces we needed.”

Anastasia and Alena grew up in Moscow and got into tennis as youngsters only at their parents’ urging. They had tried several sports--”ice skating, a little gymnastics,” according to Anastasia--before finding enough success in tennis that it resulted in them playing junior tournaments all over the world.

While staying in Florida three years ago after competing in the Orange Bowl junior tournament, the sisters began to look at collegiate tennis in earnest. They began contacting universities in California and Florida, learning that Long Beach State was one of the few to have scholarships open for both.

“We didn’t want to be separated,” said Alena, who at 17 is a year younger than Anastasia.

Hilt received a video from them last year and immediately went into action.

“Usually the videos I get aren’t really very good,” she said. “This one was about 30 minutes long and it had them in match play and in practice. You could see they were good.

“I called . . . almost instantly and . . . made them an offer.”

There was one glitch. The Dvornikovas had trouble obtaining student visas and had to wait until November to gain clearance from the U.S. embassy. Their parents, Yuri and Tatiana, still live in Moscow.

“It was to the point where we weren’t sure if they were going to come or not,” assistant coach Hally Cohen said. “It was almost devastating because I knew how good they could be . . . but we didn’t have them yet.”

Since then, the sisters have made a seamless transition. They are extremely close, so much so that they often finish each other’s sentences, even though both are fluent in English.

They also may soon have Long Beach being mentioned in the same breath as Pepperdine, UCLA and USC as local tennis powers.

“We all want to win badly,” Alena said. “Everyone’s determined to go to NCAAs.”

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It’s a regular subject and one that Alan Knipe tries his best to avoid. Can the Long Beach men’s volleyball team play for the NCAA championship on its home floor?

“We really haven’t discussed that,” said the 49ers’ first-year coach, who took over for Ray Ratelle. “But I’d be lying if I said that the guys wouldn’t like that opportunity.”

Long Beach has won six consecutive matches and moved closer to that scenario with a 30-21, 30-26, 30-26 victory Saturday over Pepperdine in the first round of the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation tournament. The 49ers (18-6) will play UCLA in Thursday night’s MPSF semifinals at Provo, Utah.

Each has won on the other’s court this season. However, UCLA outside hitter Mark Williams, who sat out a five-game loss to Long Beach on Jan. 26 because of a sprained ankle, helped spark the Bruins’ four-game victory March 17 at the Pyramid.

“We’re at full strength,” UCLA Coach Al Scates said. “They beat us when Williams was out of the lineup.”

On Saturday, the Bruins (21-7) avenged two losses to Stanford this season by defeating the Cardinal, 27-30, 30-23, 30-22, 27-30, 20-18. Williams had 26 kills and so did sophomore Cameron Mount, whose defense at the net helped force a hitting error by Stanford’s Marcus Skacel on match point.

“That was the best he’s played for us all year,” Scates said of Mount. “We know he has tremendous potential and he’s going to be even better as a junior.”

But the 49ers are the hotter team, having won their last four matches without dropping a game. Knipe played freshman Kelly Caldwell for the first time March 23 against Brigham Young and the 49ers are 6-1 with Caldwell playing the librero position in the starting lineup.

Caldwell has complemented senior hitter David McKienzie and all-purpose player Jim Polster.

“Kelly has been great,” Knipe said. “He’s had a real good run down the stretch.”

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That UCLA continues to build its women’s gymnastics dynasty with its second consecutive NCAA championship is no surprise. That was predicted back on Nov. 17, 1999, when Valorie Kondos Field signed one of the greatest recruiting classes in the sport’s history.

The sky-high predictions made for a stressful 2001 season. For example, Georgia Coach Suzanne Yoculan said Friday night, “When you lose to the Olympic team, you can’t feel too bad.”

In front of a raucous pro-Georgia crowd in Athens, UCLA prevailed over the Bulldogs, 197.575 to 197.400. That victory was sandwiched between Onnie Willis’ triumphant all-around performance Thursday and victories by Yvonne Tousek and Mohini Bhardwaj on the floor exercise and uneven bars Saturday.

“I was so impressed with our athletes,” Kondos Field said. “They had a commitment and a focus about them that carried us through. We started off with a fall on the floor and I thought, ‘Oh, God, this is going to be a long night.’

“But it didn’t faze them. Doni Thompson started us off on beam and in front of the rest of them, she very calmly said, ‘We trained for this and we prepared for this. We will be fine.”’