Chen at Home on 49er Tennis Courts

Jing Chen wanted to be the best she could be, and have a little fun along the way. So Chen left everything familiar and friendly in Shanghai, China, and headed to the United States.

Chen wound up in Florida, which was OK, but something still didn’t seem quite right. So Chen made one more trip, this time to California, and found everything she wanted at Long Beach State.

The 49er women’s tennis player is having a blast at Long Beach and the team’s coach is happy too. It took a lot of miles, but Chen finally found her comfort zone away from her family and homeland.

“Long Beach is great,” said Chen, a junior. “The team is real good and the coach is real good. Everything is pretty cool.”

Long Beach’s No. 1 singles player, Chen is also among the nation’s best players and ranked 55th by the Intercollegiate Tennis Assn. And Chen’s coach believes she possesses the physical and mental skills to go to the top of the rankings--quickly.

“As far as potential goes, Jing has everything,” Long Beach Coach Jami Jones said. “She is extremely quick, she has a good baseline game and she can also go to the net. She is a very complete player.”

She certainly was in her first match of the season. On Friday, Chen won her singles match and teamed with her doubles partner for a victory that clinched a 5-4 nonconference victory over Utah at Long Beach.

Chen’s critique called her matches only so-so. She believes she can, and will, play much better than she did Friday.

“I think I’m a pretty consistent player,” Chen said. “The competition here is very good, so that helps me get even better.”

After graduating from high school in Shanghai, Chen, 24, took a little break from school.

“I wanted to only play tennis for a little while,” she said.

After a year or so, Chen said she realized she wanted to continue her education, but not in China.

She had studied English in elementary and high school and wanted to apply it in the place she thought was best: the United States.

A scholarship offer to Central Florida soon followed. Although Chen enjoyed the school, she wasn’t happy about the way her tennis career was working out.

“I would win, but not move up much [in the rankings],” Chen said. “I just thought it would be better if I went to California because there’s much better competition here.”

Chen started working the phones less than a year after she arrived at Central Florida. Her first option was Stanford and she also liked UCLA. But Chen said neither school would offer her a full scholarship.

Hello, Long Beach!

“I called Jami and she called me back right away,” Chen said. “She seemed very interested and Long Beach seemed like a nice place.”

Chen has been everything Jones had hoped for.

“Jing has been such a great addition to our team,” Jones said. “She is already at a national level with the way she plays.”

Chen, majoring in accounting, enjoys her classes and has made many friends at Long Beach. Still, it doesn’t replace that void created by being so far from her family.

“I’m all alone here and that is pretty hard,” Chen said. “But I go home every holiday and that helps.

“I’m very, very happy. This is a good place.”

*

Unfriendly rivalry: The men’s basketball team plays at New Mexico State on Thursday and the subplots abound.

The meeting will be the first between the teams in Las Cruces, N.M., since last season’s rocky encounter Jan. 22, 1996. Then-Coach Seth Greenberg, who is Jewish, was apparently the target of an anti-Semitic epithet scrawled on the grease board in the visitors’ locker room at the Pan American Center, the Aggies’ arena. Also, several alleged incidents of racism were purportedly directed at Long Beach’s African American players. And New Mexico State defeated Long Beach, 76-63. An investigation into the incident did not turn up the origin of the epithet.

Fast forward to this season. Greenberg is now coaching at South Florida and Long Beach has struggled most of the season. New Mexico State is trying to forget the incident.

Long Beach has won its last two home games to improve to 7-9, and is tied for second in the Western Division at 3-3. However, Long Beach is 1-7 on the road and hasn’t defeated New Mexico State at Las Cruces since February, 1988.

“We need to get going on the road now,” guard Brandon Titus said. “We have to take what we did at home and do the same thing on the road.”

49er Notes

The defending Big West Conference champion baseball team opens its season with a three-game series at Fresno State, beginning at 7 p.m. Friday. Long Beach’s home opener, against USC, will be at 7:05 p.m. Feb. 7 at Blair Field.

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Coming Attractions

Here’s a look at key games this week for Long Beach State:

* Men’s basketball Thursday at New Mexico State, 6 p.m. New Mexico State won, 76-63, last season in a game marked by several off-the-court incidents at the Pan American Center. Long Beach hasn’t defeated New Mexico State at Las Cruces, N.M., since the 1987-88 season. New Mexico State leads the all-time series, 16-15.

* Women’s tennis Thursday at UC San Diego 1 p.m. The 49ers earned a surprising victory over Utah in a nonconference match Friday at Long Beach. However, Long Beach now has to go on the road. Jing Chen, the top-seeded singles player, is playing well but could be pushed in this one.