Another Vaughan Working Her Way to the Top

NEWPORT BEACH — Corona del Mar sophomore Nadia Vaughan had a decision this fall: Should she fight or be polite?

Vaughan could have stepped aside when her coach, Tim Mang, asked if she would play doubles and let her higher-ranked teammates compete for the Sea View League’s two singles spots in the Southern Section tournament. But if she was ever going to step out of her big sister Nina’s shadow, stepping aside wasn’t the way to do it.

It turns out fighting was the right thing to do for Vaughan, who finds herself in today’s section individual round of 16 at Racquet Club of Irvine. Vaughan beat teammate Caylan Leslie in the league semifinals and breezed through two rounds of qualifying. Had she remained a doubles player, Vaughan might still be wondering how far she has come as a singles player.

Now the question is how far can she go. Mark Kaplan, Vaughan’s new private coach, thinks that could be pretty far.

“She’s a great athlete,” said Kaplan, a former tour player who has been working with Nina and Nadia for less than two months. “She’s like a racehorse that’s been kept in the stable.”

Vaughan said it’s no coincidence that her improved play started about the time she began working with Kaplan.

“He’s made me work a lot harder than I’ve ever worked,” Vaughan said. “He’s changed my game for the better. He makes it hard, but fun. I needed someone to kick my butt a little more.”

She has shown flashes of brilliance throughout her first two seasons of high school tennis. But she also has shown that she can be erratic and tentative.

“Once she gets her head set on what she wants to do, she’s fine,” Mang said. “Sometimes she gets frustrated and starts hitting out from behind the baseline off her back foot and that doesn’t work very well. When she’s moving forward and setting up points, she’s at her best.”

Vaughan played No. 2 singles last season for Corona del Mar, but she was beaten out of that spot by Leslie during preseason practice. Leslie was the better player during the regular season as she went 24-0. Vaughan was 21-3, but she never considered bowing out of the league singles competition.

“Coach asked if I wanted to play doubles,” she said. “I said, ‘No, I think I’d be fair if you gave us all a shot.’ ”

Vaughan, fourth-seeded, wound up upsetting the top-seeded Leslie, who retired in the second set when she became ill. Vaughan lost in the finals to Nina in straight sets, but she had proved her point by qualifying for the section tournament.

“Both of us wanted to win pretty bad and we were both nervous,” Vaughan said. “It boiled down to who could handle their nerves better.”

The following week, Vaughan atoned for a regular-season loss to Palos Verdes Peninsula’s Hana Miller with a 6-2 victory over Miller in the Sea Kings’ 11-7 victory in the Division I team finals.

“My errors have been cut in half and I’m using a lot more strategy out there,” Vaughan said. “When I played Hana the first time I wasn’t thinking.”

Kaplan said he is just getting started with Vaughan.

“We haven’t even hit the tip of the iceberg,” said Kaplan, who played at UC Irvine under Greg Patton. “We haven’t started working hard. If you’re going to be one of the top players, you have to work out like the top players.”