UC IRVINE NOTEBOOK : Korac’s Sleight of Racket Keeps Opponents Off Balance

To watch Biljana Korac play tennis--or to play against her--is to be deceived. She doesn’t hit the ball hard, nor does she rush in to volley.

“I’m a baseline player,” Korac said. “I don’t really go to the net. I don’t have much of a serve. . . .”

What she does have is a 12-3 record and an eight-match winning streak for the UC Irvine women’s team, which is off to its best start since 1988.

While an opponent’s confidence grows and her alertness dozes, Korac plots her strike.

“A big part of my game is the mental game,” she said. “I hit a slice here, then I hit higher balls just at the right time to throw the other player off.”

Coach Doreen Irish, whose team is 12-4 and plays Cal State Fullerton on the Titans’ courts at 1:30 today, approves of Korac’s contributions.

“Biljana’s talent for patience and good ball placement breaks down her opponent’s game and makes her our team’s most deceptive weapon,” Irish said before the season.

Korac, who is a native Californian from San Marino--her father was born in Yugoslavia and her mother in Peru--has moved up the ladder during her career from No. 4 singles to No. 3 and now, much of the time, No. 2. She has been alternating with Kelly Goldsborough--”my really good friend”--who is 9-9 and dropped back for a while when she struggled earlier in the season.

Korac, a senior, says her high hopes for the Irvine team have been dashed so many years that this season she was “really pessimistic.”

“Every year, I think this is our best team,” she said. “Then every year, somebody gets ill, somebody gets injured, somebody gets in a car wreck. My first three years, I always though we’d be a great team. Then something would happen. This year, we’re doing really well.”

Ali Yoshimoto, a junior, is 16-9 at No. 1, and freshman Krista Kuechler is 13-4.

But the team’s success will stop short of the postseason, Korac believes.

“It would have been so great if we could have gone to the NCAAs, but we’re not,” she said. “We play UCLA, USC and get clobbered. Then we play other teams that are from back east that are weaker, and win.

“I wish we could play some of the bottom teams in the top 25, but teams that are ranked don’t want to play teams that are unranked.”

The program’s budget is also a factor; Irvine can’t afford to travel the country in search of achievable but impressive victories.

“It’s a money situation, with the budget cuts,” Korac said. “We can’t fly to Florida and Texas.”

Korac’s career is drawing to a close, but her coaches still would like to see her change her game. Their attempts to improve her serving and volleying have never quite ended.

“They’ve tried,” Korac said. “Everyone’s said that. Maybe if I could go back and do it, maybe when I was a freshman. . . . But I’ve mastered what I do best. It’s working for me. Why change?”

A social ecology major, Korac completed her degree requirements last quarter and is free to enjoy the rest of the spring season with a light class load. She hopes to attend law school, and is trying to avoid anxiety as she awaits word about her applications.

“I’m hoping Santa Clara Law School will take me,” she said. “That’s my No. 1 choice. Maybe if you print that, I can send it to them.”

In a twist on tradition at Irvine, the women’s team is thriving, but the powerhouse men’s team is struggling. At 7-8 after finishing sixth in the UCI/Marriott Classic, the men fell out of the national rankings this week for the first time this season.

There was one positive note: Brett Hansen-Dent, the talented sophomore who had been on a five-match losing streak, won three of four matches.

Marieke Veltman ended her assault on the women’s long jump record in a match at Irvine Saturday--she broke it, leaping 20 feet 9 3/4 inches. The previous school record was 20-6, set by Michelle Kelley in 1983.

Veltman, a junior, also surpassed the provisional qualifying standards for the Olympic trials and the NCAA championships.

It wasn’t Veltman’s only victory of the day. She also won the 100-meter low hurdles in 14.2 seconds and the 200 in 24.1, both personal bests.

While most members of the Irvine track team compete at the UC Riverside Invitational Saturday, Veltman and two other versatile athletes, Kristi Kaufmann and Matt Farmer, will travel to the Texas Relays in Austin, where the women will compete in the heptathlon and Farmer in the decathlon.

To the presumed relief of Jean Ashen, wife of men’s volleyball Coach Bill Ashen, the Irvine team defeated Ohio State last week, breaking a five-match losing streak.

Ashen had grown sideburns and pledged not to shave them until the team won, much as men’s basketball Coach Rod Baker grew a beard while waiting for his team to break a losing streak at reached 11 games.

Irvine, 5-15 and 2-10 in the difficult Western Intercollegiate Volleyball Assn., plays host to UCLA at 7:30 Thursday in Crawford Hall.

Though the volleyball team’s season has been disappointing, sophomore Leland Quinn is on pace to break Steve Florentine’s school record for kills in a season. Florentine had 379 in 1990.

Quinn is among the national leaders in kills, tied for eighth in the NCAA with an average of five a game.

Irvine golfer Lyle Archer is the two-time defending champion of the Anteater Invitational, which begins Monday at Big Canyon Country Club in Newport Beach.

The Irvine team has two first-place finishes and three thirds in its past five tournaments. William Yanagisawa has finished sixth or better in all five tournaments.