By Preston Williams
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 17, 2007; E01

"Are you sure?"

Those three words, inquisitively lobbed by one tennis player to another after a questionable call, are what separates the sport from all others at the high school level.

Youth tennis players not only have to wrap their rackets around off-yellow blurs traveling upward of 100 mph, they also must officiate their own matches. They can make more split-second line calls during a single, grunt-filled rally than a baseball umpire might make all week -- and they often have to do it while out of position and out of breath.

The players also are charged with keeping score themselves and policing other infractions, such as foot faults on serves. Players in all sports skirt the rules -- basketball and soccer players flop to get a call, offensive linemen hold a nose guard like a prom date -- but tennis is the only one in which an impartial adult observer is not there to blow the whistle or throw the flag.

"There's a ton of ways you can cheat in tennis," said Bullis senior Will Beck, one of the top-rated 18-year-olds in the Mid-Atlantic Tennis Association. "It takes a lot of responsibility to make the right call. It's a gentleman's game. You have to give respect to your opponent."

In youth tennis -- high school play as well as most matches on the junior circuit -- those playing the match call the match, as if it were a pick-up basketball game. It could be the hotshot USTA standings climber or the casual player whose high school career tops out at No. 3 doubles.

"It's definitely an aspect of tennis that people don't really think about, especially on the high school level," said Will Pelak, the top player at Jefferson. "People imagine the U.S. Open or the French Open, where there are [several] line judges and they're used to seeing the person put his arm up for out or arms together for in. It's really just a one-on-one sport when you get on the cracked courts of high school."

Tennis players are asked to do what many high school athletes seem to have trouble doing -- play fair. A two-year national survey of more than 5,200 high school athletes conducted by the Josephson Institute of Ethics and released in February found that "both boys and girls are more likely to cheat in school [than non-athletes], and far too many are willing to cheat in sports and engage in other dishonest, deceptive and dangerous practices without regard for the rules or traditional notions of fair play and sportsmanship."

And most of those surveyed play sports with officials and umpires.

Area tennis players and coaches say that on-court disputes are relatively infrequent. "I think the overall sportsmanship is so good that people make more bad calls against themselves than against their opponents," Whitman Coach Jasen Gohn said. But they do occur, given the pressure that some players feel to win. In fact, some want to win so badly that they "wish" the ball out, coaches say: They see what they want to see, even if the ball lands well inside the line.

"The kids that cheat the most, they know how to do it," said Churchill senior Jared Pinsky, ranked 18th nationally in the USTA's 18-and-under age group. "They pick their spots. . . . On a big game point they'll try to cheat you. They're all about trying to win and they'll do anything to win. Their goal is to make you mad and try to get you off your game and make you angry. . . . I've seen a number of times when other kids aren't playing fair, it gets in their [opponent's] head and their whole game goes down from there."

Jim Elder, who coaches girls' tennis at Flint Hill in the fall and boys' tennis in the spring, says he sees more cheating from boys than from girls in the 12- to 14-year-old levels of junior tennis. He explains the disparity by surmising that boys at that age are more wired to want to win. He thinks the genders cheat "equally rarely" at the high school level.

"You might get a dirty look or something, but [girls] rarely even say, 'Are you sure of the call?' " Elder said. "They're even less verbal than the boys at the high school level."

Bullis Coach Jack Schore, who has instructed many of the top young players in the Washington area for the past 40 years, believes that the ethics learned in tennis last a lifetime, but that the sport's few cheaters start early in their careers, often because of parental pressure.

"It's not that the parents say, 'Hey, go out there and cheat,' " Schore said. "But it's a lot of, 'Hey, you've got to win.' Not 'play well.' Not 'do your best.' Not 'compete your best.' It's 'win.' "

When there is a dispute during a high school match that the players cannot resolve themselves, the coaches try to work it out. In some junior tournaments, a player may request an umpire, a luxury usually not available to high school teams except in some postseason matches.

Area pro Vince Pulupa, who played at Walter Johnson, recalled witnessing a junior tournament match years ago in which a player requested an umpire the moment he picked up his cans of balls from event officials. Told that he could not make such a request until there was a dispute, he played one point before repeating his request. He wanted to put his opponent, a known cheater, on notice that he expected a fair match.

"For those who know what they're doing, you can always cheat the first time and you're not going to get caught," Pulupa said. "These players at all levels know that. They always get that one, the first one that gets the other player so upset. A lot of cases you'll see a player use it on a crucial point where they'll get something in the books, get the game or get the set. You can bring an umpire over, but they've got it, it's over and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Unfortunately, for the honest players, when they walk into a situation with someone with a reputation like that, [they're thinking], 'When is the first one going to come? When is it going to hit?' "

In high school, there are often six singles matches going on at once, making it difficult even for the coach, idle teammates and parents to keep a close eye on every court. Tennis etiquette discourages whistles of disbelief or catcalls from the spectators. There are no officials to yell at, and it would be poor form to berate a player.

Even so, it can be difficult to watch perceived injustices go unpunished.

"What's the joke with parents -- 'I've never called a bad line?' " said Whitman Principal Alan Goodwin, the father of All-Met players Mike (formerly of Richard Montgomery) and Chris Goodwin (Rockville). "It's so easy in tennis to counter a bad call: You called mine out? Okay, I'll call yours out. Sometimes you'll see someone make a legitimate call of 'out' and it is actually out. But the player that hit it doesn't think so. So within a couple of points, the player who thinks he got hooked will call something out that obviously isn't out."

Having officials would alleviate disputes, but it would be almost impossible, financially and otherwise, to have an umpire on every court for high school matches. And in many instances, the players are in a better position than an umpire to make an accurate call -- assuming accuracy is their top priority.

"All the other sports have [officiating], and it wouldn't be a terrible thing to have it to take the pressure off the kids and to take the pressure off the coaches," Episcopal Coach Hank Harris said. "There definitely have been times I wish someone was there. When it gets tight and close, it gets kind of uncomfortable. That's when you'd like to have one on hand."

There's good reason for that discomfort. "When the match gets closer late in the set at 4-all or 5-all," Beck said, "the line calls get a little closer and you get a little agitated about it and it can escalate into bad sportsmanship."

Thanks to human nature, the temptation to cheat will always be there. The challenge is to resist that temptation.

"I think every high-level tennis player at some point thinks about their line calls and thinks, 'Wow, this is a way to win cheap points,' " Pelak said. "Then they snap back to their senses."