Throughout the 2009 season, the No. 11 UCLA women’s tennis team had high hopes of repeating as national champions.
Now, the Bruins will have to be content with watching the remainder of the tournament from the sidelines.
UCLA was unable to pull off the upset, falling 4-2 to the No. 6 Miami (Fla.) Hurricanes in the Round of 16 on Friday in College Station, Texas.
“Miami just played better than we did,” UCLA coach Stella Sampras Webster said. “We certainly played well in doubles, but Miami came out very strong in singles.”
Bruin junior Yasmin Schnack was disappointed by the team’s early exit but said the defeat would serve as an impetus to drive toward a title next season.
“UCLA hasn’t been out (of the tournament) this early in a really long time,” Schnack said. “It’s kind of a motivation for next year, because we don’t want to have this feeling again. Next year starts now.”
The swing match for the doubles point at Court 1 was tipped in Miami’s favor early with junior Laura Vallverdu and sophomore Michaela Kissell up 2-1, but UCLA’s team of Schnack and sophomore Andrea Remynse fought back for an 8-4 victory.
Schnack emerged victorious, 6-1, 6-4, from her singles encounter on Court 1 with sophomore Julia Cohen, the third-ranked singles player in the nation. However, she was the only singles player to do so, as four Bruins dropped individual matches to seal their fate and knock them out of the tournament.
Senior Ashley Joelson, who hails from Texas, played the final match of her UCLA career at the No. 5 spot in front of her home crowd, but she could not hold a 4-1 second-set lead and succumbed to a 6-1, 6-4 defeat to Gabriela Mejia.
“If we had won a couple of those second sets, momentum would have definitely been going for us,” Sampras Webster said. “We certainly weren’t playing well in the first sets. We played better (in the second sets), but not well enough to win. We really could have turned things around if we had won our second sets and used that momentum going into the third.”
For Schnack, though she will compete in NCAA Individuals, it is little consolation for her team’s demise.
“It’s more about the team,” Schnack said. “It’s really disappointing that we lost so early.”