For four players on the UCLA women’s tennis team, this had to be the year, and they all knew it.
Tracy Lin, Elizabeth Lumpkin, Alex McGoodwin and Riza Zalameda only had one chance left to accomplish what they wanted from the moment they stepped foot on UCLA’s campus.
And when it finally happened, Lin couldn’t believe it, Lumpkin said it felt surreal, McGoodwin wouldn’t trade the feeling for anything, and Zalameda had never felt better.
“They set the tone for this year,” coach Stella Sampras Webster said. “To be able to win this means so much because they’re just a special group.”
The four seniors made it a point to make sure their teammates knew just how much they wanted to win the NCAA Championship this season.
“We had a lot of team talks and wanted to just go over what our philosophy was and how we were going to go about accomplishing our goal,” Lumpkin said. “It was just basically to keep the belief system that we learned from last year: That we can win a national championship but work harder than anyone else out here.”
All the hard work finally paid off for the Bruins Tuesday.
The UCLA seniors were able to help the team accomplish nearly every goal on which it had set its sights, short of an undefeated season.
“I can live with the fact that we didn’t go undefeated, because whatever, I don’t care,” McGoodwin said. “Everything is perfect right now.”
Not everything was perfect for McGoodwin during the season though, as she seemed to be in a constant battle with a variety of injuries, including a surgery performed on her left hand just before the start of the season. The senior is in her fifth year at UCLA and gained eligibility for this season because of an appeal with the NCAA for her first season, when she sat out for over 30 percent of the season before watching her team fall in the title match.
Her decision to come back, however, wasn’t an easy one, but after realizing how much she wanted to help her team win the national championship she decided to return to UCLA even though she was done with all her coursework.
“Worth it? Are you kidding? You can’t even ask that question,” McGoodwin said after the match. “It was totally worth it. This is exactly what I came back for.”
The senior did her part on Tuesday, cruising in her singles match 6-4, 6-1 after clinching the doubles point with partner Yasmin Schnack before the duo was named to the All-Tournament Team for the No. 3 doubles position.
Meanwhile, Zalameda earned the Most Outstanding Player award for this year’s NCAA Championships as well as a spot on the All-Tournament Team in both singles and doubles with Lin.
The fourth senior, Lumpkin, did her part in the semifinals, clinching the win with a three-set win on court No. 5 to help the Bruins advance to the finals.
“That leadership is going to be truly missed,” Sampras Webster said. “They were just an outstanding class and their work ethic was unbelievable throughout the season.”
The Bruin seniors were well aware that they had the ability to win the title, but it was just a matter of stringing together six stellar performances in the tournament.
And now that they’ve done that, they found the perfect ending to their years in Westwood.
“We played our best tennis at the right time,” McGoodwin said. “We knew we could do it all along, but knowing that you’re a good enough team to do it and actually doing it are two different things. The fact that we actually did it is unbelievable.”