It’s not surprising that women’s tennis coach Jenny Hilt-Costello holds all the 49er tennis coaching records.  Eleven years ago, she inherited a tattered program. Elite talent, money, scholarships and wins were all scarce.  But like a big shove in the right direction, the Beach Pride Referendum passed in the spring of 2000.

The $49 dollar increase to tuition doubled the women’s tennis scholarships from four to eight, and that was all Hilt-Costello needed.

“We didn’t have much respect,” says Hilt-Costello.  “But the Beach Pride money gave us the scholarships we needed to go get some real talent.  Plus our fundraisers and the summer camp… it all started in 2001 with the Dvornikova sisters.”

Alena and Anastasia Dvornikova came to the Beach from Moskow, Russia and helped the 49ers to a good showing in the Big West.  Hilt-Costello was looking at her program, and comparing it to the other highly ranked teams in the nation.  A lot of the perennial powerhouses had elite talent from here in the states, but most of them had international flavor.

“It’s tough to recruit in the states if you’re not a big school.  Great players want to go the ACC, SEC, Stanford’s and Notre Dame’s.  I’m not opposed to recruiting USA players.  I want the best available players.”

Some of those “best available” are entering their final year at Long Beach State like England natives Jessica Weeks and Hanah Grady.  And some are just getting started like freshman Anais Dallara, who hails from Valbonne, France.  But Hilt-Costello has this mix & match international bunch playing like a team, and the ladies have bought into the “Let’s Go Beach” mentality that Hilt-Costello brings. (Of course, when you say “let’s go Beach” you have to do it with an accent.)

This article is just a little introduction for a week that could tell us, and the team, where they’re headed this season.  The Beach will play three matches in the next four days in what Hilt-Costello is calling, “a warm-up for April” when the 49ers will try to take their sixth straight Big West title.  They will have to play back-to-back days at Indian Wells for the Big West crown, so coach is looking for the team to “get stronger as the week goes.”

Come out to the Rhodes Tennis Center today at 2pm as the 49ers take on Cornell, and come back on Thursday for more stories about the International City’s most International team.