Having to travel and play on the road is never an easy task, especially for the men’s and women’s tennis teams, so when they both travel to play in the same vicinity, the task becomes more bearable and often more exciting.
When both Bruin teams made it to the 2007 NCAA Championships after capturing their respective regionals at home, it came as no surprise to either team that they had some form of fan support all the way in Georgia.
“The biggest thing is that we’re really far away from home so we don’t really have a fan base here, but it felt like we had some of the best crowds of anyone here, especially considering the number we had,” said junior women’s tennis player Elizabeth Lumpkin. “It gives you a little bit of inspiration and extra motivation because they’re behind you and they know you’ve been working hard all year.”
Though both teams practice at the Los Angeles Tennis Center, there haven’t been many friendships amongst members of the two teams until recently, when athletes on both teams have begun to appreciate one another.
Oftentimes when the men’s team or the women’s team is playing a home match, the other team will practice on the back courts of the LATC during the doubles point, but several players will hang around after practice to watch some singles play to cheer on their friends.
“I feel like I know them so well because we see them everyday,” freshman Stephanie Wetmore said.
Wetmore and her teammates gathered together in the lobby of their hotel before the men’s team took on Georgia in one of the most hostile collegiate tennis environments to make posters with encouraging words and some with inside jokes, in hopes of helping them to ease some tension and loosen up when they took the courts to take on the eventual champion Bulldogs in the quarterfinals.
The signs and posters helped to do just that whenever the Bruins looked up for inspiration, although in the end, they weren’t able to outlast their opponent.
“It’s nice looking up in the crowd and then seeing our section wearing blue right above the court in a sea of fans wearing red and white,” senior Chris Surapol said. “It definitely helped calm the nerves.”
And the next day, even after having being ousted from the tournament, the UCLA men’s team was there to support the team who had done the same for them the night before, when the women took on No. 4 Florida in the quarterfinals. Even with Florida bordering the state of Georgia and being just a car ride away, the atmosphere made it seem as though the Bruins had drawn a far larger crowd, even though that wasn’t the case with Gator fans far outnumbering Bruin fans.
“Since we were so far away from home, we didn’t really have too many fans,” senior Alex McGoodwin said. “They went out of their way to come to all of our matches, so it was amazing.”
When the match came down to the wire with McGoodwin battling on Court 5 for the clinching point, she could look behind her to see and hear the encouraging gestures from a team that was yelling chants and starting 8-claps and slow claps on all but the last of McGoodwin’s match points.
“They were all really positive and very supportive,” McGoodwin said. “You feel like you have people behind you and believing in you.”
“We have a lot of friends on the girls’ team and we’ve been watching them over the season and seeing them get better,” Surapol said. “Any time a team goes on a good run like that, you want to cheer them on because they’re fighting so hard.”
So when the time comes to travel to Tulsa, Okla., next year for the NCAA Championships, it won’t come as a surprise to either team when they feel right at home though they are thousands of miles away.