Women's tennis to begin NCAA first round at home against Quinnipiac

With every long and arduous season, a team will see highs and lows. The UCLA women’s tennis team, which has seen more of the former than the latter this season, will have to see nothing but victories from now on to claim its first national championship since 2008.

The road to the NCAA Championships begins Saturday at the Los Angeles Tennis Center, as the No. 6-seeded Bruins (18-5) were chosen to host regional play for the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament.

Seeds were only awarded to the top 16 teams in the tournament, providing the selected teams with favorable early-round matchups and home court advantage. A high seed is an honor the team is historically familiar with but nonetheless appreciates.

“We’re really happy with our draw,” coach Stella Sampras Webster said. “It was kind of what we were hoping for. It gives us a great opportunity to get through (our matches) here. … Everybody is feeling confident and ready to play.”

The Bruins will face Quinnipiac in the first round of the postseason. The Bobcats (14-8) went undefeated in their conference this season to clinch the Northeast Conference title, the sixth in school history. They have also made six appearances in the tournament in the past eight years, including a trip to UCLA in 2007 when the Bruins shut out the Bobcats 4-0 in the opening round.

Quinnipiac, located in Hamden, Conn., will have to make that 2,500-mile trip again to UCLA’s courts while the Bruins get to enjoy staying at home. The Bruins have certainly had success at home this season, finishing 11-1 at the Los Angeles Tennis Center, with the only loss coming against top-seeded Stanford.

“It’s always nice to play at home,” senior Maya Johansson said. “We know those courts by heart, and it gives us a pretty big advantage. We can have our fans come and watch us.”

The Bruins have not gotten to know their home courts in a competitive setting in a while, as the last home match was played on March 26. The Bruins have also not had a dual match in four weeks, but that is not to say that they have not been practicing hard.

“Recently in practice, we’ve been doing a lot of match play because that’s what we need (to work on),” junior McCall Jones said. “We’ve been doing anything that has to do with getting up ready to compete.”

According to Sampras Webster, the team has spent the past week playing a lot of matches in practice to make up for the lack of match play over the past month. During the previous week, the focus was on fitness and training to help for longer sets.

“Now it’s all about fine-tuning,” Sampras Webster said. “There are really no major changes or anything. It’s just about (the players) getting a feel for playing and getting confident.”

Before the match between the Bruins and the Bobcats, San Diego (18-5) and University of Nevada Las Vegas (20-5) will play each other for their first-round tilt. The winner of each match will compete on Sunday for a spot in the NCAA round of 16, which takes place in Stanford starting the following week.