From the time Logan Hansen began playing tennis as a little girl she’s had a dream to play at Stanford.
The dream is about to come true.
Hansen, a Santa Monica resident who attends Brentwood School, won the CIF individual championship in her junior year – becoming the first Brentwood woman ever to do so – then was besieged by scholarship offers from around the country.
But she had only one goal. She studied hard to meet Stanford’s high academic standards, compiled a 3.9 GPA, kept improving her game and a week ago was offered the opportunity to become a Stanford student and member of a tennis team that has produced five All-Americans in each of the last three years.
“She’s thrilled,” said Logan’s mother, Sue Hansen. “She was polite to the other recruiters but told them Stanford had been her longtime goal.
“When Logan visited, met the girls on the team and met [Tennis Director and longtime coach] Dick Gould she was even more convinced that was her destination.”
Hansen, 17, will play one more year for Brentwood before beginning her college education.
The Hansens had a lot to celebrate. Logan’s success represents a victory for their decision of the last four years to bypass the temptation of tennis academies – where teenagers live to focus on the sport.
The family decision was for Logan to live at home and have a normal high school life.
In a Santa Monica Mirror interview in January, Sue Hansen explained the reasoning.
“We were approached by the tennis academies when she was 13. Many American players now follow the Eastern European model of living in the academies. But we tried to make a balance between tennis and school.”
Logan is happy with the way it has been for her as one of America’s up-and-coming tennis stars.
“I’ve never felt like I wasn’t living a normal life,” she said. “I have tennis friends and school friends. In accepting Stanford’s offer she turned down Princeton, Yale, North Carolina and Dartmouth among dozens of others.
