By Michael Tsai
Advertiser Staff Writer
One hails from Budapest, Hungary, the other from Alamagoto, Western Samoa.
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| Petra Gaspar, left, and Tagifano So'onalole form BYU-Hawai'i's have helped the Seasiders extend their winning streak to 78 games. |
One beat Martina Hingis in international juniors competition, the other got homesick after a year in junior college.
One is unnervingly intense with a solid command of her game, the other unflappably relaxed with the power to serve comets.
Two years ago, Brigham Young-Hawai‘i tennis coach Dave Porter looked at his No. 1 player Petra Gaspar and his redshirt sophomore Tagifano So‘onalole and saw a perfect match.
"Petra has a good but not great serve and a good but not great volley," Porter said. "What makes her special is her competitiveness. Off the court she’s sweet and nice, but on the court, you don’t want to know her.
"Tagifano is different," he said. "She’s has a great serve. She’s a big Samoan girl, and she’ll just overpower you. But she’s also very relaxed. She wants to win, but she also has a lot of fun on the court."
In the seemingly polar profiles, Porter saw the potential for sweet harmony.
"I thought their individual skills would complement each other well," he said. "Petra keeps Tagifano focused, and Tagifano keeps Petra relaxed."
For the Seasiders, one good match begets another. And another. Gaspar and So‘onalole have lost only two doubles matches in the two seasons they’ve played together. Both those losses came against top-ranked Stanford in the semifinals of the prestigious Rolex National Intercollegiate Indoor Championships.
The pair have helped BYUH extend its school-best winning streak to 78 games, including 11 this season.
Gaspar and So‘onalole first met as junior doubles opponents at the 1994 Australian Open. But it would be five years and many winding roads before their paths intersected again.
Gaspar, 24, was once considered the best women’s tennis player in Hungary. Before coming to BYUH, she had competed professionally, rising as high as No. 165 in the world.
For her parents, that wasn’t high enough to justify putting off her education.
"They’re both teachers," she said. "They wanted me to go to school."
Because of her professional status, Gaspar wasn’t eligible to go to an NCAA Division I school, despite strong interest from UCLA, Stanford and other schools.
That opened the door for Porter, who hooked Gaspar on one of the school’s biggest selling points.
"For people in Hungary, it’s a dream to go to Hawai‘i for two weeks," she said. "I’d get to stay for four years."
Once at the La‘ie campus, Gaspar quickly went from being the best player in Hungary to being easily the best player in NCAA Division II and, without much argument, one of the best players in the country, period.
In her freshman year, she went 26-0 in singles play and 25-1 in doubles en route to NCAA Division II Rookie of the Year honors and a No. 1 singles ranking.
So‘onalole, who goes by the childhood nickname Dengue (yes, the fever), was one of the top women’s players in the Pacific before leaving in 1997 to attend McLennan Community College in Waco, Texas.
So‘onalole, 23, won three gold medals at the South Pacific Games in 1999 and was the No. 1 player for Pacific Oceania in the Federation Cup from 1995 to 1999. She was equally impressive in her one and only year in Texas, where she became the top-ranked junior college player in the country.
But success on the court didn’t do much to quell So‘onalole’s growing homesickness. She returned home at the end of the year.
Again, it was a long-distance call from Porter, whom So‘onalole had met at a 1997 tennis camp, that proved fortuitous for player and team.
"I’m really happy here," she said. "Hawai‘i is a lot like home."
So‘onalole had no problems adjusting to her new doubles partner either. Friends on and off the court, So‘onalole and Gaspar have been a clear cut above their Division II competition since their first match together.
"It’s awesome," Gaspar said. "We have opposite personalities. She is so happy and outgoing, she keeps me relaxed."
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