The Bears will also be bringing a good dose of Cal spirit with them.

The team has a tradition unlike any other — when the postseason rolls around, players spray-paint their tennis shoes blue and gold in honor of the university they play for and represent.

“Everyone kind of puts their own spin on it,” says coach Amanda Augustus, whose kicks are also a bright blue and gold. “But it has to be school colors.”

Some choose an electric gold that mirrors the state’s California poppies paired with a true and bright Yale blue — the two sources that the University of California borrowed its colors from. Other players are a little more subtle, preferring a metallic gold that doesn’t catch the eye as much but still stands out on the courts of Hellman Tennis Complex.

Some players take their Cal spirit beyond their footwear. Sophomore Zsofi Susanyi and freshman Klara Fabikova had blue streaks in their normally blond hair last weekend. Each also painted her nails in the university’s colors, alternating blue and gold for each finger.

Even the athletic tape that the players wore this weekend — normally green or pink — was shades of either blue or gold.

But the longest-standing tradition is definitely the shoes. Augustus says that the tradition predates her time as a player for Cal in the late ’90s. Her coach back then — the legendary Jan Brogan, who led the Bears to 25 NCAA appearances — also couldn’t pinpoint an exact date.

“I would be guessing as I coached for 29 years,” Brogan says. “But I can pin it down to the Lisa Albano era.”

Lisa Albano played for Cal from 1988 to 1992, placing the shoe-painting tradition at more than 20 years old.

Augustus carries on the tradition, having her players lay cardboard down on the track in Edwards Stadium so that they can spray paint their shoes. They have to paint a few weeks before the postseason begins, or else the shoes won’t be dry in time.

But the Bears haven’t had to worry about jinxing their postseason chances or painting the shoes prematurely yet — in Augustus’ six seasons as head coach, her teams haven’t missed the postseason once.

Cal’s rivals have caught on to the tradition and have started doing something similar, but the players maintain that the idea originated in Berkeley.

“We did it first,” says sophomore Cecilia Estlander. “USC and UCLA have kind of started doing it, but we did it first.”

Riley McAtee covers women’s tennis. Contact him at rmcatee@dailycal.org

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But not anymore.

In two of their last three matches of the regular season, the Bears had to make a comeback in singles after dropping doubles matches and finding themselves in early 1-0 deficits. This included doubles losses to opponents like Arizona, who weren’t strong enough to even make the 64-team NCAA tournament.

The Bears’ top duo of Lynn Chi and Anett Schutting seemed to be clicking earlier in the year, when they won five straight doubles matches. But down the stretch, the duo was only 3-4 in their last 7 doubles matches of the season.

Match after match, it seemed like the Bears could only hang on in doubles by a thread and would often have to use their strong singles play to bail themselves out later.

But with their drumming of Auburn, 4-0, on Saturday at Hellman Tennis Complex, that may no longer be the case.

It was no surprise that No. 8 Cal cruised through Stony Brook, 4-0, on Friday. But Auburn, the No. 25 team in the nation, was supposed to give Cal a tougher challenge in the second round of the NCAA tournament. Instead, the Bears dominated and earned a trip to the Sweet 16.

Unlike in their usual sluggish starts in the regular season, the Bears exploded in doubles against Auburn. Tayler Davis and Kelly Chui jumped to an 8-1 win on court No. 3, and Anett Schutting and Lynn Chi — the same duo that was struggling just a few weeks ago — beat the No. 10 doubles team in the country with an 8-3 win on the top court to earn the doubles point for the Bears.

“I thought we were solid,” said Cal coach Amanda Augustus. “And then, on court No. 3, we had a really, really good day. That got us off to a great start.”

The Bears carried that momentum over into singles, where the Cal freshmen rocked Hellman Tennis Complex. Lynn Chi raced to a 6-0, 6-1 finish on court No. 4 to give Cal its second point of the match. Meanwhile, Cal’s other freshman, Klara Fabikova, dominated her opponent in a 6-1, 6-1 route.

The Bears needed just one more point to put the match away.

Seniors Tayler Davis and Annie Goransson were each up five games in their second sets, needing just one more game from either to seal the match for the Bears.

“Me and Annie were kind of in a race to see who would finish first,” Davis said. “(Assistant coach) Cordell was sorta joking with me to see who would finish first.”

Davis was able to beat Goransson in their race to finish off the opponent first, winning 6-3 on her court to give the Bears the four points needed to end the match.

It was a fitting end for the senior captain’s last match in Berkeley.

“I think a couple of them had a look up at the scoreboard and may have deferred to their senior captains a little bit,” Augustus said, smiling. “This is her big day.”

Watch an interview with co-captain Tayler Davis here

Riley McAtee covers women’s tennis. Contact him at rmcatee@dailycal.org

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And 16 wins and 5 losses later, the Cal women’s tennis team could be in a position to do just that. As the No. 8 team in the country, the Bears earned the right to host the first and second rounds of the NCAA tournament.

And though they were only able to muster a second place finish in the Pac-12, the Bears feel good about accomplishing the goal Schutting set three months ago.

“I like our chances,” said freshman Lynn Chi on Wednesday. “Hopefully, we can go all the way. I like our chances for that.”

The Bears (16-5) are prepared to steamroll through this first leg of the tournament. They play their first opponent, Stony Brook, on Friday at 1 p.m. at the Hellman Tennis Complex in Berkeley.

Cal knows little about Stony Brook (12-4), a university smaller than UC Berkeley that is located in Long Island, N.Y. Stony Brook did not play a single ranked opponent all year and only made the tournament by winning the American East Conference.

Should the Bears beat the Seawolves, they will go on to face the winner of the other first-round matchup — either St. Mary’s or Auburn — at noon on Saturday. No. 21 Auburn just missed the cutoff for hosting the first two rounds of the NCAAs, as only the top-16 squads gain home court advantage. Meanwhile the Bears crushed Saint Mary’s in January in a 7-0 route.

As the only Goliath in a first round full of Davids, the biggest challenge for the Bears will be adjusting to the slightly different rules between the tournament and the regular season. Though matches are the same format, they end as soon as a team clinches the match with four points, so some players will not go on to finish their individual match.

“We just play to four, so when we clinch the match, it just stops,” said Cal coach Amanda Augustus. “It’s a little bit of an adjustment mentally to not lose concentration if someone is up and about to win. (They have to be) keeping attention on their own court.”

While the Bears have made it to at least the sweet 16 in the last six years, they are not getting ahead of themselves.

“You have to take it match by match,” Augustus said. “You can’t assume anything at this time of year, because all these teams have played a lot of tennis, and they wouldn’t be in the tournament if they didn’t have a good season.”

For Cal, the real advantage to hosting the beginning of the tournament is not having home court advantage or being the highest seed — it’s being home for finals week. While schools like Stony Brook and Auburn have to make the long trek to Berkeley this week, the Bears will be able to sleep in their own beds at night.

“It’s huge,” Augustus said. “Especially with finals on the horizon and all their office hours, review sessions, tutoring, papers and all this stuff they got. So they don’t have to deal with that too much — until hopefully next week.”

Riley McAtee covers women’s tennis. Contact him at rmcatee@dailycal.org

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But before the players can do that, they have one last match to play.

Due to a scheduling quirk, Cal (15-5, 9-1 in the Pac-12) will take on UCSB in Santa Barbara at 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday.

Though the Gauchos (14-7) have put together a decent record over the season, their schedule has been filled with unranked and unaccomplished teams. Without a ranked player on the roster, they will have a tough chance competing against Cal, which has four ranked players and two in the top 10.

The match is an odd hiccup for the Bears in a schedule otherwise consisting of weekend matches. But the Tuesday match gives them a chance to hone their skills for the postseason. Two days after the UCSB match, the team will be in Ojai, Calif., for the Pac-12 Championships.

After the win over Stanford, the Cal team feels like it is close to peaking, and the players plan to use this UCSB match as a springboard to bring their level of play to its full potential.

“I think we’re finally gelling the way we need to,” said Cal coach Amanda Augustus. “Our goal is to peak in the (NCAA) Tournament.”

The match gives many of the players a chance to practice more in doubles, in which Cal has lost the doubles point in both of its last two matches. Zsofi Susanyi recently returned from injury, and her getting more playing time with her doubles partner, Klara Fabikova, should help the duo gel the way Augustus wants.

“(Susanyi and Fabikova) just need matches,” Augustus said. “Hopefully next week, they get a lot of matches doubleswise to just kinda get them better in sync.”

Those two in sync will be a huge asset for the team. The Cal team has been regularly facing 1-0 deficits going into singles play as a result of losses in doubles.

But while the Bears are struggling in doubles, they are dominating in singles action. The team has won at least four of the six singles courts in its last four matches. Cal has used that dominance to bail itself out of early deficits and win matches.

Susanyi back on the court is a boost for the entire team. As the current No. 5 singles player in the country, Susanyi at full strength gives the other players a leap in confidence.

“Now that we have Zsofi back, we can definitely see what is possible for us,” said senior Tayler Davis. “Because before, without her, I think we weren’t as confident.”

A win against UCSB would build off the momentum that Cal gained from beating Stanford and would send the team into the postseason with a six-game winning streak and as much confidence as any team in the field.

“I think we’ve prepared really well and worked so hard for a long time now,” said senior Annie Goransson. “We’ll just see how far we can take it.”

Riley McAtee covers women’s tennis. Contact him at rmcatee@dailycal.org

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After four years of consecutive losses, No. 9 Cal was finally able to topple its rival, No. 12 Stanford, 4-3, on Friday at the Hellman Tennis Complex in Berkeley.

After USC won its match against UCLA, the Cal-Stanford match was no longer for the conference title but instead for second place. The win secures Cal (15-5, 9-1 in the Pac-12) the runner-up finish in the conference, but more importantly, the match was the first time that any of the players on the Cal squad were able to beat the Cardinal (16-4, 8-2).

From the beginning of the match, the walls of Hellman reverberated with desire — both teams wanted it badly.

“I’m a very emotional person, and as expected, I cried a little bit in that opening (senior day) ceremony,” said senior Tayler Davis. “But I knew I was going to do everything I could to win this match because it meant that much to me.”

Stanford was the faster, stronger team in doubles and won on the top two doubles courts to take an early 1-0 lead.

But in singles, Cal began to climb back. The Bears soon found themselves in a 2-2 tie with three courts left in play after Lynn Chi and Zsofi Susanyi won their matches on courts No. 3 and No. 4, respectively. But Anett Schutting lost her match on the top court, knotting up the two Bay Area squads.

With Klara Fabikova pushed into a third set on court No. 2, seniors Davis and Annie Goransson had a chance to clinch the match for the Bears.

After winning a tiebreaker in the first set, Davis won the second set and her match when Stanford’s Ellen Tsay hit a ball into the net.

“I don’t think I could have asked for a better senior day for it to come down to me and Annie,” said Davis, who could not stop smiling after the win. “It was just a great feeling. I don’t think I can really describe it.”

Cal was up 3-2, and Goransson had the opportunity to clinch the match for the Bears against Stanford’s Natalie Dillon. A crowd congregated around the No. 6 court, and the match started to turn in Goransson’s favor.

“I love having a lot of people supporting me and screaming,” Goransson said. “I don’t know what happens, but I love that situation, and I raised my level quite a bit.”

With a crowd behind her, Goransson erased a 4-2 deficit in the second set and soon found herself up 6-5 on match point.

Dillon, off-balance, hit a ball high into the air. It hung in the sky forever before dropping just out of bounds.

The crowd erupted into a cheer as Goransson dropped her racket and her team rushed to embrace her.

Cal clinched its first win over the Cardinal since 2009.

“I just got this happy feeling throughout my entire body,” Goransson said, “and I looked at my teammates who I love so much, and I saw them coming towards me. I’m never going to get that kind of feeling again.”

Riley McAtee covers women’s tennis. Contact him at rmcatee@dailycal.org.

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Rivalry match? Check. Top-15 teams? Check. Possible title on the line? Check.

When the Cal women’s tennis team takes on Stanford on Friday at the Hellman Tennis Complex at 12:30 p.m., the stakes will be as high as they have been for any match this season.

The match could determine a share of the conference title.

At the same time Cal and Stanford are battling, USC will be playing its own rival in UCLA. If the Trojans lose that match, then the winner of the Cal-Stanford match will share the Pac-12 title with USC.

Although USC is favored over UCLA and beat the Bruins earlier in the season, anything can happen in a rivalry match — something the No. 9 Bears are fully aware of.

Despite Cal’s superior ranking, the No. 12 Cardinal (16-3, 8-1 in the Pac-12) have had the Bears’ number in recent years.

Cal has dropped its last seven dual meets against the Cardinal. The Bears (14-5, 8-1) have not beaten Stanford since April of 2009 — including a loss to the Cardinal in Palo Alto in March.

In that loss, Cal was without sophomore Zsofi Susanyi and senior Annie Goransson, both of whom will play in Friday’s tilt.

Susanyi is the No. 5 singles player in the country, and since her return from injury, she has yet to drop a singles match.

Goransson returned immediately after that match against Stanford and has gone 7-2 in singles since, jumping between courts No. 5 and No. 6.

The return of those two players gives the Bears the advantage of being able to tinker with their lineup in ways they couldn’t in their last match with the Cardinal.

“We’re making a couple of adjustments in doubles,” said Cal Coach Amanda Augustus. “And we’ll definitely give Stanford a different look singleswise.”

It’s been so long since Cal beat Stanford that the two seniors on the squad — Goransson and Tayler Davis — have never done so.

Unless Cal ends up hosting the first rounds of the NCAAs, this will be its last match in Hellman as well as its last chance to knock off Stanford.

“Annie and Tay have contributed tremendously to the success of the program over the last four years,” Augustus said. “To have both of our seniors out there on the court competing on senior day is exciting.”

For Goransson, beating Stanford for the first time in her four years at Cal would be the ultimate farewell.

“That would be pretty big,” Goransson said. “I know we have a good chance, and if we were to beat them, though, that would mean a lot to me. And a lot to the team.”

But Goransson is not focused on the end of her career just yet. She is still working so that Cal can have success in the tournaments that come after the regular season.

“(Playing tennis for Cal has) meant so much to me, it’s hard to express it,” Goransson said. “But I’m not thinking too much about it right now because we have the NCAAs and everything coming up.”

Riley McAtee covers women’s tennis. Contact him at rmcatee@dailycal.org

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She sees a complex machine at work. She sees a network of tissues, muscles, bones and tendons working together in harmony.

Alice is amazed at how each individual part of the human body serves an overall purpose.

“It’s just fascinating knowing how the human body is made,” Alice says. “It’s so complex, but it works perfectly on its own. It just gets me fascinated every time I open the book.”

That fascination has brought Alice halfway around the world to Berkeley to pursue her passion of becoming a doctor. In France, where she grew up, high school athletes have to choose between joining a sports club or going to university, but Alice couldn’t give up tennis yet.

So Alice decided to come to America where she could do both.

Alice is now a junior on Cal’s women’s tennis team, but she is also one of the many pre-med hopefuls at the university. She is a biology major and math minor, taking some of the toughest classes Cal offers.

But Alice relishes the classes. For example, Biology 1A, known for being notoriously difficult, is Alice’s favorite class she has taken at Berkeley.

“The exams make it probably the hardest class I’ve taken,” says Alice. “But I love learning how everything functions, and they relate it to everyday diseases people have.”

Alice hasn’t decided the specific field she wants to pursue yet, but she knows one thing for sure — she wants to help people.

Growing up with two parents that are also doctors, that desire to help people was natural for Alice.

“There are a lot of ways to help humanity, but with medicine you are closer to people,” says Alice’s mother Lise. “We build our life with the energy we get from the results of our work.”

When Alice was 4, her dad Jacques introduced her to tennis.

She would play tennis with her father at the local country club on the outskirts of Paris. With her mom, she would swim. When she was 12, Alice moved to a school at which she could only focus on one sport. She chose to pursue tennis and never looked back.

For Alice, tennis is her outlet for expression. When she steps onto the court, she feels like an artist making something that is uniquely hers. Through tennis, she was able to improve as a person both on and off the court.

“You have your own game — no one has your shots,” she says. “You learn about yourself and fight against some bad habits that you have.”

As her love of tennis grew, Alice never thought about being a doctor. She was actually turned off from the medical field when she was young because her parents were busy with work. She didn’t understand why she couldn’t see them more often.

“Early in my life, I was a little pissed at my parents,” Alice says. “I was hearing about my friends spending time, going to the movies or going somewhere with their parents, and I never went out with my family.”

At age 16, Alice realized that her parents were as passionate about medicine as she was about tennis. Alice’s frustration turned to admiration. She realized that she wanted to help people like her parents.

However, she couldn’t do both in France. Becoming a doctor there can take up to 10 years, but the first two are medicine only — she would have had to give up tennis.

Alice wasn’t ready to give up her lifelong love of tennis just yet. In order to pursue both tennis and medicine simultaneously, she had to come to America.

While Alice was looking for schools, she was drawn to Cal due to its strong academics. During her trip to Cal, Alice met other international players who helped make her feel comfortable.

Alice saw how other European players were able to balance rigorous academics with ambitious athletic goals. And when Cal offered her a scholarship, Alice’s decision was easy.

“How could you even say no?” Alice says about coming to Berkeley. “It’s very inspiring here. They teach you how to go for your dreams and see things bigger.”

Now that Alice is at Cal, she’s found pursuing both of her dreams to be both challenging and rewarding.

Tennis begins for Alice at 7:45 a.m. every morning for conditioning and weights. She then has class during the middle of the day before tennis practice from 2-6 p.m. She then heads to the Student Learning Center to study with her tutors. She often doesn’t get home until late at night.

During fall and spring semesters, Alice doesn’t have the four-hour blocks of free time to fit in the necessary labs she needs for her biology major. She can’t take all the classes she needs to be on pace to graduate.

So Alice has to take summer classes, giving up opportunities to be back in France with her family over the break. Last year, she went through a seven-month stretch which she didn’t go back home.

When she did go back home, it was a brief 10-day visit.

The roles between Alice and her parents are now switched — Alice is the one working so hard and so long that she can never be at home with her family.

But despite the long separation, her parents understand.

“We are happy if Alice is fulfilling her project,” Lise says. “We have no philosophy besides this belief: you are the sole person who knows what you like, what you need and what you wish — so do it.”

In Berkeley, Alice is doing it. Despite the difficulty, she knows the long journey will pay dividends for her in the end.

“I tell myself it’s worth it,” Alice says. “Because I’m going to do something with it.”

Riley McAtee covers women’s tennis. Contact him at rmcatee@dailycal.org.

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Women’s tennis on the west coast is dominated by Cal, Stanford, USC and UCLA, teams that are consistently ranked among the top in the country. The Sun Devils (15-3, 5-2 in the Pac-12) are usually in the top 25, but each year, they are unable to crack the top four.

A win for No. 21 Arizona State on Friday over the No. 11 Bears would finally place them among those elite teams.

Meanwhile, the match will give Cal (12-5, 6-1) a chance to climb back into the top-10 teams in the country — the place at which it started the season.

After taking on the Sun Devils in the desert on Friday at 1:30 p.m., the Bears will then take on Arizona (9-11, 1-6) on Saturday at noon.

While the Wildcats shouldn’t be too much trouble, the Sun Devils will prove a challenge for Cal.

Arizona State plays an aggressive style of tennis, especially in doubles. By playing close to the net, its players can force quick points that can surprise a team. The Sun Devils also limit their opponent’s options by keeping them toward the center of the court.

“They’re usually very good in doubles,” said Cal coach Amanda Augustus. “They’re always very well-coached, and they make adjustments, especially during the match.”

The aggressive doubles play from Arizona State will prove to be most of the challenge the Bears will face. Last weekend, Cal’s top doubles duo of Anett Schutting and Lynn Chi was uncharacteristically pushed to the brink against an unranked Oregon duo.

The Bears will find out whether last week’s struggles are a pattern or an aberration when Chui and Schutting play Arizona State’s top pair of Jacqueline Cako and Nicole Smith, who hold a 12-3 record on the season.

On the No. 2 doubles court, Cal will also face a challenge. Klara Fabikova has been playing on that court in doubles all year, but her usual partner — Zsofi Susanyi — has been in and out of the lineup with a hip flexor injury.

Susanyi was able to return to doubles last weekend with Fabikova in an 8-1 win but was pulled from singles. Augustus is optimistic that the duo can be back on the court once again on Friday.

“Zsofi’s had a great week, so I think she’s super excited to get back out there,” said Augustus. “They need matches together, and I think, hopefully, they’ll gel.”

The good news for Cal is that the Bears are very familiar with the Sun Devils. In the fall, Arizona State sends many of its players north to compete in Cal’s fall tournament, and later in the semester, the Bears return the favor and send many of their players to Arizona. As a result, players on both squads are familiar with the opposing play style.

And as luck would have it, Cal will be more familiar than usual with the hot, dry weather that they will face in Arizona as well.

“It was ironic because we kinda had a windy, hot week here in Berkeley,” said Augustus, “but that’s good preparation for the conditions that we’ll face in the desert.”

Riley McAtee covers women’s tennis. Contact him at rmcatee@dailycal.org.

The post Against Sun Devils, a chance for Bears to move back into top 10 appeared first on The Daily Californian.

But the match provided an opportunity for Cal (12-5, 6-1) to show improvement.

The Bears’ two promising freshmen — Lynn Chi and Klara Fabikova — looked particularly impressive.

Chi and teammate Anett Schutting was challenged early in doubles by the Oregon squad (12-8, 1-7). Oregon’s duo of Nicole Long and Patricia Skowronski were able to push the Bears to an early 4-5 deficit on the top court.

It was like the duo had lost its focus — Chi and Schutting just kept making errors early on.

However, Schutting and Chi were able to come back and win the match, 7-6(2).

“They were playing from behind because they made a few unforced errors early in the match,” said Cal coach Amanda Augustus of the doubles team.

“We had to let them adjust on their own a little bit, and they did. I was happy to see them pull that match out for sure.”

Augustus found the close match to be good practice for the squad.

“I think it was good to have a little bit of a test,” Augustus said. “Coming off the high of last weekend, it would be real easy to take the opponent lightly. The girls did a really good job of carrying over, and I think they focused really well today.”

Cal entered singles with a new lineup. Fabikova, who has consistently played on court No. 3, was bumped up to court No. 2 due to her recent strong play.

“We gave her an opportunity to play on a higher court — I think she’s earned it,” Augustus said. “Just testing her a little bit, and she responded really well to the challenge.”

In recent weeks, Fabikova has dominated in singles play, winning her last seven singles matches. That streak includes tough opponents such as UCLA’s Kyle McPhillips and USC’s Zoe Scandalis.

Even on the higher court, Fabikova dominated as usual.

She defeated Skowronski in singles, 6-2, 6-1. Though Fabikova was favored in that match, Augustus emphasised the challenge Fabikova faced in Skowronski’s experience and aggressive play.

“Skowronski has played at (court) No. 1 for them a lot, and she’s just solid,” said Augustus. “She has a really good volley.”

Earlier in the day, it was Skowronski’s ability to come up to the net that pushed Schutting and Chi in doubles. This did not prove to be a problem for Fabikova.

Fabikova’s move to the second court meant that Cal’s other promising freshman — Chi — was moved down to court No. 3. Essentially, the two players switched places.

For Augustus, Fabikova’s success proves that Cal has two talented freshmen that can each play at a high level.

“Obviously, when Lynn is doing great too, it’s a nice problem to have,” Augustus said.

“You can put people in different positions, and they can be successful.”

Each of Cal’s top five singles players won her match in straight sets. Kelly Chui on court No. 6 was the only Cal player to lose a set.

Riley McAtee covers women’s tennis. Contact him at rmcatee@dailycal.org

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