Going up to the Bay Area this past weekend, the women’s
tennis team hoped to continue the momentum of its eight-match
winning streak.
Instead, they came home with two disappointing losses and two
missed opportunities to topple the nation’s elite teams.
The No. 10 Bruins were defeated by the No. 1 Stanford Cardinal
and the No. 13 California Bears.
“They both played well, and it wasn’t really our
weekend,” senior Laura Gordon said. “It’s just
been hard for us to get a rhythm.”
On Friday the back-to-back national champion Cardinal quickly
took care of the Bruins 7-0, dropping just one set. The Cardinal
extended their home winning streak to 93, which was boosted to 94
the next day after they defeated No. 4 USC.
“They’re a very mentally tough team,”
sophomore Elizabeth Lumpkin said of Stanford, which UCLA
hasn’t defeated in eight years, “They maintain a high
level of play throughout the match. Even if they aren’t
playing well, they make you work for every point.”
The Bruins looked to bounce back against the Golden Bears of Cal
on Saturday after the embarrassing loss.
After they captured the doubles point, it appeared as though
things were going in favor of the Bruins. At the No. 2 doubles
position, Lumpkin and junior teammate Alex McGoodwin were able to
fight off three match points when they were down 4-7, 0-40 to win
in a tiebreaker.
On the next court, the duo of freshman Ashley Joelson and
sophomore Tracy Lin were also able to pull out a victory after an
intense tiebreaker.
“After coming off the Stanford loss, we were just trying
to focus on regrouping and starting off with the doubles
point,” Lin said. “It was really close, but we managed
to pull it off and we were feeling really good going into
singles.”
However, Cal opted to use a different lineup than when the two
teams first met at the Los Angeles Tennis Center. And much to the
Bruins’ dismay, the change was effective for the Bears, as
they quickly captured singles wins on the top three courts, taking
a 3-1 lead they would never let go of.
“It was definitely good winning the doubles point, but
they came out strong after doubles, and they didn’t give
up,” Gordon said.
Cal captured its decisive win on court No. 4, where Cal’s
Cristina Visico defeated UCLA junior Alex McGoodwin 7-6 (3),
6-1.
After going nearly a week without practice due to rain, the
Bruins felt as though they weren’t in top condition heading
into the weekend, something that would have been pivotal.
“It’s just been hard for us to get a rhythm,”
Gordon said. “You can’t be off when you play against a
good Pac-10 team.”
“There wasn’t anything that really went wrong. We
just didn’t play well,” Lumpkin added.
UCLA hopes to recover from the losses, as three of its four
remaining regular-season home matches are against Pac-10 foes, and
two of them are against crosstown rival USC.
“Now we’re just looking forward to practicing at
least a couple of times a day and getting back to the highest level
that we can,” Lumpkin said.