Category Archives: Women’s Tennis

The story between UCLA and UC Irvine’s women’s tennis teams remained unchanged as the Bruins swept the Anteaters 7-0 at the Los Angeles Tennis Center, but an abundance of new faces wrote this year’s script.

As the Australian Open, one of four grand slam tennis tournaments, comes closer to its conclusion, it is the UCLA women’s tennis team that is taking notice in preparation for its season opener.

When Stella Sampras Webster announced the 2011 recruiting class in June of last year, ranked No. 3 in the country at the time by TennisRecruiting.net, she couldn’t help but get excited.

The sixteenth-year coach received commitments from three blue-chip recruits in Robin Anderson, Skylar Morton and Kaitlin Ray, who had all been ranked top-five in the country at some point during the 2011 year.

Despite an elite field of teams which included the top-five women’s tennis teams in the country, it appeared as though USC was again going to steal the show at the Freeman Memorial Championships in Las Vegas this past weekend.

March Madness’ Sweet 16 may be as salivating as it gets for many college sports fans. But as far as women’s tennis is concerned, its own NCAA Championship round of 16, at best, presents an offering closer to sour, a mere morsel that fails to satisfy an appetite for excellence.

Anderson and Morton comprise part of a highly-touted UCLA freshman recruiting class which was ranked third overall in the country according to TennisRecruiting.net. The two freshmen were vaguely familiar with one another from their days on the junior tennis circuit. The two freshmen went out and decisively won the 64-team doubles draw of the 2011 USTA/ITA Southwest Regional Championships in San Diego.

For the UCLA women’s tennis team, the outlook shortly after the beginning of the season was bleak.