TENNIS / DANA HADDAD : Sectional Is No Match for End of School Year

The Southern California Junior Sectional tournament last week drew about 1,500 of the best young tennis players in the region.

Possibly 1,500 headaches and 1,500 rivers of tears followed.

The largest junior tournament in the United States, held in Fountain Valley, conflicted with year-end school activities. Dozens of matches had to be rescheduled and several players defaulted because of final exams, graduation ceremonies or classes they couldn’t miss.

“It’s horrible,” said Jim Hillman, director of junior tennis for the Southern California Tennis Assn. “[The first three days] were very hard on the tournament committee. Education is very important, but we had a lot of matches starting at 5 and 6 o’clock in the evening.”

The players were forced to weigh their tennis futures against their academic futures, and tournament officials were caught in the middle of a dilemma that is becoming an annual occurrence.

The choice would be easy if the sectional were not the most-important local tournament in qualifying players for the national championships. Also at stake are corporate sponsorships and college scholarships.

The problem is widespread. Players who do not have conflicts or make schedule adjustments before the tournament are also effected.

Dylan Mann of Canoga Park, who attends Taft High, arranged to miss important review sessions for this week’s final exams. But Mann, one of the top players in the boys’ 18-and-under division, could have attended some of those classes had he anticipated several rescheduled matches.

His first-round singles match was changed from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.and his first doubles match was delayed by one day on the eve of the tournament.

“I picked him up from school early and drove down there, and we found out it was pushed back,” said Eric Mann, Dylan’s father.

Volunteers working the tournament desk, scrambling to make the 11th- and 12th-hour time changes for desperate players, were thrown into a tizzy.

Mann’s first singles and doubles matches were each rescheduled for 3 p.m. on June 22. The doubles match was then switched to 5 p.m. The opposing doubles team wound up defaulting at 5 p.m. because of an injury.

When Mann asked for the time of his second-round match, an official pointed to the draw sheet and said, “You missed it. It was at 1:30 p.m. today.”

The Manns couldn’t blame the officials.

“With one match, Jim Hillman had to call six people and it took him an hour to change the time,” Eric Mann said. “I don’t think Dylan minded it as much as some of the other players.”

Dylan Mann and Ryan Thompson of Santa Ana persevered, winning the boys’ 18 doubles championship late Sunday in the final match of this massive tournament.

“The problem is, when they start changing times, people lose faith with the times that are on the draw,” Eric Mann said. “It’s also difficult to arrange eating, warmup and practice times if the match times keep changing.”

Hillman is determined to make changes in the tournament that will reduce the nagging conflicts. One solution is to delay it by one week to allow more players to finish school.

But then the sectional would conflict with the La Jolla Championships, a sanctioned two-week event for juniors and adults that concludes today.

“This is an important tournament to that community, and if we came in and said ‘you’ve got to move,’ there would be a lot of upset people,” Hillman said. “We’re hoping to work out something to accommodate both tournaments.”

“Right now we’re in the exploratory stage.”

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Mann, 16, didn’t waste any time in capturing his first title in the 18s. He and Thompson upset top-seeded Joseph Gilbert of Fullerton and Kelly Gullett of Whittier, 7-6, 3-6, 6-3, in the doubles final.

Mann and Thompson, seeded third, won the first set, 9-7, in a tiebreaker.

“It feels really good,” Mann said. “I had no idea who was in the draw or how we would do, but we play really well together.”

Monique Allegre of Camarillo and Brandi Freudenberg of Orange captured the girls’ 18 doubles championship, beating Calabasas High seniors Kirsten Gross and Shera Wiegler, 6-1, 6-1. Allegre, headed to Arizona on scholarship, and Freudenberg (UCLA) rolled through the tournament, winning every match in straight sets and not allowing more than three games in any set.

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Brandis Braverman made the jump from the 16-and-under division to 18s without much of a hitch.

The Encino resident, after losing in the second round, earned a fifth-place finish after defeating Kristina Kraszewski of Torrance, 6-3, 6-1, in the consolation final. In 1994, Braverman finished fifth in the 16s.

Gross and Wiegler are now likely to receive entry into the mid-July national clay-court tournament by reaching the sectional final in 18 doubles. Sixth-seeded Gross and Wiegler got a break when the No. 4 team of Julie Banks and Harvard-Westlake High graduate Romy Mehlman defaulted because Mehlman suffered a leg injury.

Darian Chappell of Camarillo started the year ranked 37th in girls’ 16 singles, but she solidified an entry to the national hard-court tournament with a fourth-place finish in the sectional. She reached the semifinals with a 6-2, 6-3 victory over Jonni Seymour, after Seymour eliminated second-seeded Nina Vaughan in the second round.

Grit was likely Maureen Diaz’s best weapon, as the Glendale girl triumphed in three matches that each took three sets en route to the 14 singles final. There she lost to No. 8 Tiffany Brymer, 6-4, 6-4.

Lori Stern of Ojai earned a sixth-place finish in girls’ 12s the hard way. She lost in the first round of the main draw then won five consecutive matches in straight sets in the consolation bracket.

Entering the 32-player draw, Nick Varvais, 15, of Simi Valley hoped to win two matches and crack the top eight in boys’ 18 singles. He did better, losing only to eventual champion Geoff Abrams while beating No. 1 Jason Cook of Woodland Hills, No. 6 Thompson and No. 3 Gullett and finishing in fifth place.

Unseeded Nicholas Weiss, 12, of Woodland Hills reached the semifinals of boys’ 14 singles and defeated La George Mauldin, 4-6, 6-4, 6-1, to capture third place.

The championship match in boys’ 12s was a neighborhood showdown between No. 2 Philip Sheng and No. 4 Garrett Wong, both of Thousand Oaks. Sheng won, 6-3, 6-3, but Wong gets credit for upsetting top-seeded Derrick Bauer, 6-4, 2-6, 6-4, in the semifinals.

Russell Mullin of Thousand Oaks also upset the No. 1-seeded player to get to the final of boys’ 10 singles, where he lost to Vahe Assadourian of Glendale, 6-2, 6-4.