PREP PREVIEW ’92 / GIRLS’ TENNIS : Huberman Controls, Then Beats Her Opponents

LOS ALAMITOS — The player, whose eyes were fixed on the ground and ears tuned to the conversation, suddenly burst out laughing.

A comment had caught Susan Huberman, the top singles player on the Los Alamitos High girls’ tennis team, off guard. But she was obviously amused.

“Susie is able to look at a girl’s game and exploit her weaknesses,” Griffin Coach Debbie Fleming said. “She’s crafty. She’s the master of manipulation.”

The master of manipulation? A great slogan for a chiropractor perhaps, and certainly a vivid description of your best player. But isn’t it a bit incendiary, future bulletin board material for opposing schools?

Naah. That’s just Fleming and Huberman, two girls who like to have fun, kidding around.

And why not? As one of the county’s leading singles players coming off a Southern Section team championship, giggling comes easily.

“I think tennis is not only challenging, but also fun,” said Huberman, a senior and a three-year varsity player for the Griffins. “Part of that fun is how to find the other players’ weaknesses and attack them.”

Huberman has been doing that remarkably well during her prep career.

The left-hander shared the team’s No. 1 singles spot last season with Valerie Palmero, who graduated and returned to her native France, and posted a 60-14 record in helping Los Alamitos win its fifth consecutive Empire League title and compile a 23-0 overall mark.

In the section Division 2-A championship match against Rosary, Huberman won two of her three sets and sparked Los Alamitos to its first section title. One of her victories was a crucial 7-5 upset of Mandy Gomez, a top-notch player, and a 6-0 victory over Stephanie Coyne that clinched the match for the Griffins.

The year before, she finished 32-8 and turned a few heads by taking third place in the league’s singles tournament. And as a freshman on the junior varsity team in 1989, Huberman was 30-0.

Not bad for someone who preferred playing soccer until her sophomore year in high school, when she kicked that sport goodby and decided to concentrate on tennis for practical reasons.

“Tennis is totally different from soccer because you are not only playing for the team but also for yourself,” Huberman said. “In tennis, I just have to manage myself instead of depending on a whole team. Plus I can find someone to play with on the spur of the moment.”

If that someone doesn’t mind being manipulated, of course. Or dealing with Huberman’s tricky serve and strong groundstrokes. As a left-hander, she usually presents problems for opponents unfamiliar with how shots come off her racket. In tennis circles, it’s called, “Advantage, Miss Huberman.”

“For some reason, people have a difficult time returning serve if I’m serving well,” Huberman said. “I guess it’s because of the reverse spin on the ball, which spins to the righty’s backhand. That’s why I try to work on my serves so they kick wide (to the right-hander’s backhand).”

Said Fleming, in her eighth season with the team: “Lefties can do wonderful things with the ball.”

Some of them can also be temperamental--do the names John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors ring a bell?--but Huberman is the picture of decorum on the court. She’s equally gracious in her rare defeats as in her numerous victories, and seldom makes a fuss over borderline shots. And hardly anything can distract her during a match.

“I can pretty much block things out and concentrate when I really want to,” Huberman said. “I’m usually pretty good about staying focused on what I’m trying to accomplish.”

That ability will come in handy as the new season gets underway and Huberman faces challenges on the court and in the classroom. She has a 4.0 grade-point average and wants to maintain it throughout her senior year. And then there’s the matter of trying to lead the Griffins to another league title and maybe all the way to the section Division III (formerly Division 2-A) championship.

But for now, Huberman says she doesn’t feel any pressure.

“Not yet,” she said. “Right now I’m just going out to have fun. As the year progresses, I think I’ll feel more pressure. Everyone is going to be coming at us. We’ll just have to stay focused.”

Or push that manipulation thing to the wall.