ONLINE EXTRA: Bruin star Walker heads home to Lone Star State
By Daily Bruin Staff
Feb. 28, 2002 9:00 p.m.
By Eric Perez
Daily Bruin Contributor
Before junior Sara Walker signed her letter of intent to come to
UCLA, there was another school she thought seriously about
attending. The University of Texas at Austin, a school where the
majority of her friends would go, the school where her brother now
plays tennis, and a school located closed to where her grandfather
lives.
But the lure of UCLA, her teammates and the coaching staff
proved far too irresistible an environment.
Now, three years later, as a Bruin, she will travel with the
rest of the No.7 UCLA women’s tennis team to Austin to take
on No. 10 University of Texas on Saturday.
“Texas is home to me,” said Walker, an El Paso
native, who is ranked No. 4 in the nation. “It’s going
to be fun going back and seeing my brother and all of my friends
who go to school there. The thing with me is when I go down there I
really want to beat them.”
Beating the Longhorns (6-0) will not be easy. The Bruins (8-0)
travel into the depths of the southwest with a good old-fashioned
bull’s eye attached to them. UCLA will play a top-10 team for
the first time this season as the favorites.
“We are doing well right now,” senior Petya Marinova
said. “We started the season at No. 16, and no one has really
expected us to come out and be as good as we are By continuing to
win we are going to prove we are back and are contenders for the
NCAA championship.”
They go into Penick-Allison Tennis Center facing up against a
hostile home crowd that is known to fill up the house with
enthusiastic Longhorn fans. The Bruins, however, claim that it will
not deter them from coming into Texas and taking a dual-match
victory.
“I have heard they have a lot of fans,” freshman
Sarah Gregg said. “But that will probably just get us pumped
anyway. It had worked for us against ‘SC when their band was
playing and it got us going more than it did for USC.”
Band or no band, the Bruins will have to bring their
“A” game to Austin, because they will be facing an
environment only Walker knows intimately.
“Playing for the University of Texas and sports in general
is such a big deal in Texas,” Walker said. “They have
so many fans that come out to the matches. The team is feisty and
they are not going to give you any free points, so we’re
going to have to work hard to beat them.”
