UCLA grabs match experience, not titles at Pac-10 tournament

By Eric Perez
Daily Bruin Contributor

After Saturday there were two, and then there were none.

In 2002 there will be no Pac-10 titles for any members of the
No. 6 UCLA women’s tennis team.

In fact, only two UCLA players were left to play on Sunday, the
final day of the Pac-10 Championships in Ojai, Calif. Sophomore
Lauren Fisher and freshman Megan Bradley fell to Cal’s Raquel
Kops-Jones and Christina Fusano 8-6 for the Pac-10 double’s
title.

Earlier in the tournament’s quarterfinal Saturday, it
would be the same Golden Bear tandem to show the door to the
Bruins’ Sara Walker and Petya Marinova 8-5.

In the Pac-10 invitational double’s bracket, UCLA senior
Catherine Hawley and freshman Sarah Gregg fell to eventual bracket
champs Stanford’s Emila Anderson and Story Tweedie-Yates 8-4
in the semi-finals.

The Pac-10 singles tournament on Thursday saw only three Bruins
entered into the tournament ““ Marinova, Gregg and sophomore
Mariko Fritz-Krockow.

All three were ousted in the first round.

While the Bruins head home without any Pac-10 championship
hardware, UCLA head coach Stella Sampras said that her team pretty
much achieved what they set out to do, which was to stay healthy,
and gain match experience.

“(This tournament) is an individual thing,” Sampras
said. “The ones that got a chance to rest (Walker, Bradley,
Fisher, and Hawley in singles) got to rest, and the ones who could
play, played.”

Match experience of any kind will be of particular importance
for UCLA as their next match will be the NCAA regional tournament,
which begins a week from now, at a location to be announced via a
teleconference call in the middle of the week.

According to Sampras, the NCAA regionals will be something that
every Bruin on the squad will be thinking about from now and until
the NCAA’s beginning.

“Everything we do now, from gaining confidence to even
getting excited will be preparation for the NCAA’s,”
Sampras said.

“This is the big dance. Everything we do in practice will
be to help us gain momentum for a week from Saturday.”