UC IRVINE NOTEBOOK : Big West Tennis Title Essential for Gaining NCAA Bid, Says Patton

Coach Greg Patton’s young but talented UC Irvine men’s tennis team puts its four-year reign as Big West Conference champion on the line this weekend at the Ojai tournament.

Also on the line is a trip to the NCAA championships in Athens, Ga., next month.

“We need to win to go,” said Patton.

Patton wants to go because he thinks this team could win the NCAA title down the line.

“This team has got a future ahead,” Patton said. “For us to attain our team goal as national champion . . . the thing that’s so important is getting those guys to Georgia and having them experience it.”

Irvine, 18-8 and ranked 17th in the country in the Volvo Tennis/Collegiate Rankings, is favored for the Big West championship over 24th-ranked Fresno State, but the Bulldogs defeated Irvine this month, 5-3.

Fresno State is the only conference team to beat Irvine this season, but Cal State Long Beach--which could be in its final men’s tennis season because of budget cuts--UC Santa Barbara and Nevada Las Vegas also have strong teams. The Big West championships are only one division of the huge tournament at the Ojai Valley Racquet Club beginning today.

“In the history of the conference, I think this is probably going to be the biggest shootout we’ve ever had,” Patton said.

Irvine, winner of eight of the past 10 Big West titles, has the top-seeded player in three of the six singles flights, plus the top-seeded doubles team.

Mike Roberts, a junior who is ranked 22nd in the country, is the top-ranked player in the conference. Brett Hansen-Dent, a freshman from Newport Harbor High School, is ranked 36th in the country, and is the top-seeded player at No. 2 singles. Another freshman, Brett Stern, is the top-seeded player at No. 5 singles.

Hansen-Dent and Carsten Hoffman, the 22nd-ranked doubles team in the country, are seeded first at No. 1 doubles.

The women’s tennis team also will compete for a Big West title at Ojai this weekend. But because of the tournament’s format, there are no individual champions, only a team champion.

Unlike the men, the women have determined their champion by team-to-team competition only, the same format that teams compete under during the regular season.

That’s not good news for Ali Yoshimoto, who enters the tournament with a 15-match winning streak. Under the men’s format, she might win the title at No. 4 singles. As it is, she goes as the team goes, and the fourth-seeded Anteaters have a draw that will send them against top-seeded UC Santa Barbara in the second round. Biljana Korac, a junior who plays No. 2 singles, also might fare better under a different format.

“The advantage of having a flight tournament is that a school might not win the conference tournament, but you still might have the best No. 6. That way that person would still get some recognition,” Irvine Coach Doreen Irish said.

The dual-match format, adopted four years ago because of an NCAA rule that could have kept former conference powerhouse San Diego State out of the NCAA championships if it didn’t win the conference title, will be up for review this week, Irish said. “My guess is that it’s going to change. That’s just intuition,” Irish said, noting that San Diego State is no longer a member of the conference.

For now, Irvine has its work ahead of it. The Anteaters, 15-11 and 5-3 against Big West teams, face fifth-seeded UNLV today. Irvine recently beat UNLV, 5-4. A victory today would send the Anteaters against Santa Barbara.

“Santa Barbara is not as strong as it has been in the past,” Irish said. “Two or three schools feel they can beat Santa Barbara.”

Irvine is hoping to finish higher than its fourth seed, and Irish likes the fact that the Anteaters lost narrowly, 5-4, to Pacific and Hawaii, the other teams seeded higher than Irvine.

The Anteaters have never finished higher than third in the tournament.

There will be 30,000 to 40,000 in attendance when six of Irvine’s women runners compete in the prestigious Penn Relays today and Friday.

Irvine was invited partly on the merit of its fourth-place finish at the NCAA cross-country championships last spring. To encourage the group’s participation, meet organizers provided the school with seven airline tickets. Without that help, the expense would have been prohibitive.

Irvine will compete in the distance medley with a team of Shelly Tochluk, Maria Akraka, Rayna Cervantes and Buffy Rabbitt, as well as in the 6,000-meter relay, with Brigid Stirling, Akraka, Cervantes and Rabbitt.

Traci Goodrich, a sophomore who earned an automatic bid to the upcoming NCAA championships in Eugene, Ore., by qualifying with a time of 34 minutes 0.2 seconds in the 10,000 meters in her first attempt at the event last Saturday, is tentatively scheduled to run the 5,000 meters.

O’Boyle, who ran for Cal Poly Pomona, recalled running in front of large crowds at the Los Angeles Coliseum. This will be the largest crowd most of Irvine’s runners have seen at a track meet. Even the NCAA championships in Eugene will only draw 20,000 to 30,000, he said.

“Maria, of course, has seen that type of thing in Sweden,” O’Boyle said, referring to Akraka, a Swedish half-miler with considerable international experience. “We Californians haven’t.”

Add track: Besides Goodrich’s NCAA qualifying mark in the 10,000, another outstanding performance Saturday at the Mt. San Antonio College Relays was Tochluk’s victory in the university division 400 meters in 55.77 seconds.

Akraka, considered a contender for the NCAA 800-meter title, was knocked down during her race at Mt. SAC, but O’Boyle said she will not have trouble qualifying for the NCAA meet.

“If it was a longer race, say, if it was the 10,000--she’d laugh--it might be tough to try to get her qualified,” he said. “But the 800, with her talent, she could probably qualify in practice. She’ll have the conference meet, or a meet the week after.”

Last add track: While Irvine’s top women are at the Penn Relays, the school will play host to the UCI Invitational Saturday and Sunday at the UCI Track Stadium.

Among the runners expected to compete in an outstanding field is Evelyn Ashford, a two-time Olympic gold medalist in the 400-meter relay. She is expected to run the 200 meters. Also competing in the women’s events Saturday will be the Australian and Japanese national teams.

Irvine, which announced a fund-raising goal of $600,000 even though the athletic department had never raised more than $380,000, has raised about $180,000 as its May 16 deadline nears.

Mike Tracey, assistant athletic director for development, said the school announced that goal even though it seemed high because it was the amount the athletic department needs to fund scholarships.

“It is a big number,” he said. “We didn’t realize how big until we got into it.”

Tracey said donations have picked up with the announcement of Irvine’s new basketball coach, Rod Baker, but he cited the economy as a reason for difficulty.

“UCLA, Cal Poly Pomona, everybody is having trouble,” he said. “A number of corporations we’ve talked to have said it’s not a good year.”

Anteater Notes

UC Irvine’s baseball team has lost 11 Big West Conference games in a row going into a three-game series against UC Santa Barbara, beginning at 7 p.m. Friday at Anteater Field. . . . The men’s volleyball team, which remained in the national top 20 despite a losing record, finished its season at 5-16 overall and 3-12 in the competitive Western Intercollegiate Volleyball Assn. Senior middle blocker Steve Florentine was the kill leader (282) for the second consecutive season and also led in solo blocks (26). Leland Quinn, a freshman from Ocean View High School, was second in kills (229).