Just one day after senior Tracy Lin was able to help clinch a 4-3 win over No. 6 Stanford for the No. 11 UCLA women’s tennis team, the Bruins dropped their fourth dual match of the season to No. 8 Cal.
Lin snapped her two-match losing streak and helped propel the Bruins past the Cardinal in the first matchup between the two teams since the NCAA Championship semifinals last season, when UCLA shocked Stanford.
UCLA carried a great deal of momentum into singles play against the No. 6 Cardinal after winning the doubles point in a triumphant fashion. The No. 2 duo of Elizabeth Lumpkin and Stephanie Wetmore came back from a 7-2 deficit to win seven straight games without facing a match point. The doubles point was crucial as the Bruins would win 4-3.
The Bruins won the doubles point with ease Saturday against the Bears. The struggles came in singles play.
UCLA quickly fell behind 2-1 after two quick Cal wins on courts No. 4 and 6, where Ashley Joelson and Anna-Viktoria Lind were defeated by Claire Ilcinkas and Stephanie Kusano, respectively.
Senior Elizabeth Lumpkin was quick to equalize the score though, as she maintained her perfect record in dual match play, reaching a 13-0 record thus far this season.
From there, the match only grew more intense, as all the attention was turned to the top three courts.
Lin fought back from being a set down against No. 52-ranked Marina Cossou to win the second set, but wasn’t able to pull out the third set, as Cossou gave the Bears a 3-2 lead and brought them within one point of a victory.
It was at that point that senior Riza Zalameda turned her game up a notch against one of the nation’s top players, Susie Babos, and ended a slump that had extended for several dual matches in which she had struggled to secure wins for the Bruins at the No. 1 spot.
With the score tied at 3-3 and Bruin freshman Andrea Remynse leading Cal’s Cristina Visico 5-3, it appeared the Bruins would end the weekend on a successful note, beating two of its toughest opponents in conference play.
But Visico had plans of her own, as she fought back against Reymnse and went on to win 1-6, 6-2, 7-6(2) to clinch the match for the Bears.
SCHNACK IS BACK: Sophomore Yasmin Schnack returned to the Bruin lineup, but played just doubles against the Bears.
Schnack sustained an injury in mid-February while UCLA was competing at the USTA/ITA National Team Indoors in Wisconsin.
She teamed with Ashley Joelson at the No. 3 doubles position, and the two teamed together to record an 8-2 win to clinch the doubles point.
MEN’S TENNIS: Members of the UCLA men’s tennis team competed at the Pacific Coast Doubles Championships this weekend, and two Bruin teams made it to the quarterfinals of the tournament before being ousted.
The top Bruin tandem of Nick Meister and Harel Srugo lost to the tournament’s No. 1 seed 6-1, 7-5 in their quarterfinal match after an impressive run.
The other Bruin duo was Mathieu Dehain and Holden Seguso, who pulled off an upset of the tournament’s No. 2-seeded team before dropping a straight-set match to Omar Altmann/Andre Begemann of Pepperdine, 6-1, 7-6(4).