Tennis on Campus National Championships
Here was the big one, the event that the whole team had been waiting for.
Weary after a long day of travel, UCSD landed in Orlando, Florida on a sunny Wednesday afternoon. It still felt surreal that we were about to compete in the biggest Club Tennis competition in the nation. This feeling slowly faded as we reached the pristine USTA National Campus, with its sprawling 50 odd courts, all maintained to perfection.
With a glimpse of the facilities and the arrival of schools from all over the country, excitement overcame the team.
We started our campaign against Georgia Tech on Thursday morning. We had anticipated that this would be our toughest fixture, and so we put out our strongest lineup. Our Men’s Doubles pairing of Abhishek Nisha Anish and Ryo Kojima, who have been formidable all year, got off to a strong start and that boosted our chances of winning. Our women’s doubles pair of Serena Ko and Tiffany Huynh followed the trend and closed out their match against a strong pairing. Our Singles players, Ethan Liu and Ally Chen faced very tough players and even though they didn’t get the result, they secured vital games to our tally. It came down to our Mixed Doubles of Alyson Hirota and Jamie Wei, who needed to win to secure our first result, and they did in an efficient fashion, taking the set and the match by a close margin of 3 games! This put us in a strong position going into the next two matches of the pool stage.
Unfortunately, Thursday was interrupted by a lengthy rain delay that pushed our next match till 5.30 pm. We then faced Colorado State, who had won their regional tournament to qualify. We kept the same lineup, except with Raj Tantuwaya starting in Men’s Singles. This match was, fortunately, less close than the first, and turned out to be a comfortable win for us, with 4/5 sets going our way in a confident display by all players.
Our final pool match came against Baylor on Friday. A win would take us into Gold Bracket and put us amongst the best 16 in the nation. Off the bat, it was clear that Baylor was going to be a tough match. We reverted back to our first lineup and this helped to push us over the line. It was another confident and efficient display by all the players, who kept their cool to beat a strong team. As Alyson and Jamie finished off their Mixed Doubles in a familiar fashion, the team was thrilled to see the rewards of their efforts!
With 3 wins from 3, our team headed into Friday’s Gold Bracket in a buoyant fashion. However, our first match was drawn against defending champions UCLA. This felt like a blow to our hopes of progressing far. Regardless of this, we went into the match hoping to play our best and leave it all out there. Perhaps the best set of tennis we’d experienced all weekend came from Abhishek and Ryo beating the UCLA doubles pair, who had beaten them a few months ago at Sectionals. This was sweet revenge for them and no less than their tennis deserved. Serena and Tiffany too, put in a much more assured display than at Sectionals, despite the result not going our way. Jamie stepped in for Singles against a very strong UCLA player and put on an entertaining and close match. Ally Chen, played a significantly better match than at Sectionals to push her opponent much more. The mixed doubles was a high level and enthralling match too, but our team was on the wrong end of the result to a very strong team. Overall, even without the result going our way, a silver lining was that our team came much closer than at Sectionals, which indicated strong improvement.
Our next three matches came against Yale, Princeton, and Northwestern to decide on our ranking. These matches were played with less pressure and expectation, but with our team still wanting to put on good tennis and enjoy themselves. Sisi Leong, who brings bags of positive energy to the team, found her form in these three matches, winning 2 and losing very close in the 3rd. Against tough opposition, she put on a strong tennis display and helped the team win against Yale and come close against Princeton and Northwestern. The win against Yale pushed us into 12th position out of 64 teams competing! Overall, we felt this was a very positive showing for our team, all of who had not played at Nationals before.
In the end, we found some time to head over to Disney Springs and enjoy some time off the courts and recover before our trip back. We traveled back to California on Sunday, very exhausted but very satisfied with a rewarding and enjoyable trip!