For the Cal women’s tennis team, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Starting Friday and concluding on Tuesday, the Bears will travel to Stanford to compete in the USTA/ITA Northwest Regional Championships. Whoever takes the crown will secure an automatic bid to the second grand slam of the fall season, the USTA/ITA National Indoor Intercollegiate Championships.
“It’s all up for grabs,” head coach Amanda Augustus said. “For whoever wants to take it.”
This particular tournament is unique in that instead of having different flights, offering one draw for singles and one draw for doubles. One-hundred and twenty eight players will compete for the singles and the doubles championships.
The competition at the event will include the nation’s top players from the northwest region. Seventeen teams will compete including Saint Mary’s, Santa Clara and Stanford.
Expected to attend are No. 1 Nicole Gibbs and No. 16 Stacey Tan of Stanford, who provide the biggest challenge to the Bears. The entire Cal squad, including No. 5 Zsofi Susanyi and No. 22 Anett Schutting, will partake in both singles and doubles.
“The fall is a mix of playing in tournaments where you expect to do well and playing in tournaments with a highly ranked field,” Augustus said. “This week is a good test for everyone.”
For Cal, Susanyi continues to recover from her ankle injury suffered last May. While her early exit at the ITA/All-American Championships two weeks ago was disappointing, Augustus believes that Susanyi is getting closer to being at full strength.
“Her goal is to progressively add more and more to her training each week,” Augustus said. “Now that she has a couple of tournaments under her belt, she wants to take the next steps forward.”
Also for the Bears, freshman Lynn Chi will have an opportunity to showcase her talent on the national stage. A week after her first place finish at the Saint Mary’s Invitational, Chi will face the most difficult competition of her short collegiate career.
On the doubles side of the competition, the usual pairing of No. 3 Goransson and Schutting will not be on the same court. Instead the Bears will be experimenting with different pairs across the board in order to see if any better combinations exist. Splitting them up has the potential to create two good teams, instead of just one.
Cal’s desire to experiment at such an important tournament demonstrates its focus on the long term. While the implications of this tournament are bigger than most, the Bears know that they have to take it one match at a time in order to meet their goal of being a top-five team in the country once the first team rankings are released in the spring.
“It’s a yearlong process,” said Augustus. “We take it event by event, segment by segment. Our focus is on the bigger picture. Having the team be as good as we can possibly be.”
Sean Wagner-McGough covers women’s tennis. Contact him at [email protected]
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