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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The elevated role of newcomers will be evident in the No. 5 Cal women’s tennis team’s annual pilgrimage to Los Angeles. When the Bears (6-1) visit No. 3 UCLA at the Los Angeles Tennis Center on Friday, all eyes will be on the top singles’ court. There, Bruins freshman Robin Anderson (No. 6 in the country) will do battle with second-ranked Cal senior Jana Juricova in a titanic clash of a red-hot newcomer against a tested veteran.

The following day, the Bears will travel to University Park to take on USC at Marks Stadium. If the No. 7 Trojans prevail, it will likely be on the backs of the three freshmen in their singles rotation, including 10th-ranked Zoe Scandalis.

“If (the freshmen) are playing at the position that they are for their team, they’ve obviously demonstrated that they can be successful,” said coach Amanda Augustus. “I think the experience a lot of our girls have will help our players.”

Cal, which moved up two spots in the rankings following a strong showing at the ITA Indoors, is not without a freshmen presence. No. 21 Zsofi Susanyi is 19-3 in her first year in Berkeley, and her only loss in her last 13 matches was to a top-10 player. Fellow freshman Cecilia Estlander had her 11-match win streak snapped in Cal’s loss to No. 3 Duke in the Indoors semifinals. Estlander’s loss underscored an underwhelming performance by the back of Cal’s lineup, which had been a highlight in the first six matches.

Whatever lineup does emerge for the 1:30 pm match will be put to the test by UCLA’s deep rotation. The Bruins (10-0) have seven singles players in the top 125 nationally, and two doubles teams in the top 20. Leading the Westwood troupe is Anderson, a Matawan, N.J., native and a teenage star. Anderson has led the Bruins to their best start in 14 years, thanks to an 8-0 duals record.

In singles overall, the Bruins are 40-2, and have not dropped a match on five of six courts. The team won its last five matches on the road, all against top-20 opponents, adding a win on the road in Baylor less than a week after winning the ITA Indoor tournament.

When the Bruins ousted USC (7-1) in the Indoors semifinals, it ended a four-match road win streak for the Women of Troy, including an upset of No. 8 North Carolina. Ironically, the pious No. 4 doubles team of Kaitlyn Christian and Sabrina Santamaria backs up Scandalis. Junior Danielle Lao, ranked No. 17, boasts an 11-match win streak going into the 12 p.m. meeting Saturday.

The weekend will produce a first glimpse at the landscape of the Pac-12, which has four of the top seven teams in the country, beginning with Stanford, the new No. 1.

“We are very lucky that our schools are located in pairs,” Augustus said of the lightened travel schedule. “I think it’s one of the reasons we have four teams in the top 10.”

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Wednesday afternoon in Santa Clara, Calif., where the Cal women’s tennis team and its Santa Clara adversaries did battle, the dreams of a spotless mark hovered, much like the cirrus clouds, which did little to temper the azure sky.

However, victory, that miserly mistress, would only succumb to the embrace of one side, and the losers would leave without a win to their name.

This time, the No. 8 Bears walloped the Broncos, 6-1, and the bleb of perfection, which had burst for Santa Clara after only one match, floated north along the Nimitz Freeway with the satisfied Cal players.

No. 5 Jana Juricova, playing on the top singles court for the Bears, won again. The win continued Juricova’s hot streak, as she is coming off a stretch in which she was named Pac-12 Player of the Week.

After an underwhelming fall that culminated with a tumble from the top spot in the national rankings, Juricova seems to have regained her form that led her to the 2011 NCAA singles championship.

“It’s a tricky thing to defend a title,” coach Amanda Augustus said. “Obviously she wants to do well in her senior year, but this year we are all focused on a team title.”

Cal’s doubles pairings were another point of concern coming into the match against the unranked Broncos.

This was the first duals match without Mari Andersson, who graduated in the spring. Andersson played on the second singles court for the Bears last season and was also Juricova’s partner on the doubles court.

Thus far this season, Juricova had been playing with Sofie Susanyi, but the freshman was sidelined for the first of two matches due to NCAA eligibility issues.
On Wednesday, some of those doubts were mitigated, as Cal won all three doubles matches. Juricova won with another Cal freshman, Cecilia Estlander.

“We still have work to do on our doubles,” Augustus said. “It’s good for the girls to compete to see where they are at.”

The match was originally scheduled for Friday afternoon in Berkeley, yet the skies were not friendly and rendered the courts unusable. The sides agreed to play the match Sunday morning, yet once again Mother Nature intervened, pushing the match three days later and 40 miles south.

The away match interrupted what would have been a stretch of more than three months without a contest on the road.

The next time the Bears travel, it will be to the prestigious ITA National Team Indoor Championships in Charlottesville, Va., which serve as a major checkpoint on any squad’s road to the title.

“Having an away match turned out to be a good thing,” Augustus said.

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The Invitational, played in the friendly confines of the Hellman Tennis Complex, was an unadulterated massacre as the No. 8 Bears overmatched Cal Poly, Fresno State and Saint Mary’s over three days. Cal players posted a 33-1 overall mark in the round-robin tournament, including a 10-0 record in doubles matches.

The Friday through Sunday tournament was scheduled to emulate the upcoming dual season, and the Bears seem to have a leg up on the out-of-conference opponents that made the trip to Berkeley. Had the event been scored as in the dual season, the three regional opponents would have each been blanked by Cal, 7-0. These results are somewhat mitigated by the fact that all three opponents are unranked, and the weekend’s dominance may be a mere opuscule compared to the daunting Pac-12 schedule that the Bears face.

Senior Jana Juricova played in the top singles court for Cal and dropped only one set en route to a three-win weekend. Juricova entered the fall season as the top-ranked player in the country but slipped to No. 5 in the most recent rankings after going only 2-3 against top-25 opponents.

Although eight of nine Bears were undefeated in singles matches, freshman Sofie Susanyi, who skyrocketed to No. 21 in the country, perhaps impressed most. Susanyi won all three of her matches in straight sets and has now won nine consecutive singles matches to improve her record to 16-2.

Susanyi’s success is far from unexpected, as she cultivated a top juniors ranking overseas, highlighted by a run to the quarterfinals at Junior Wimbledon in 2009.

“She’s a very competitive player who thrives in match play,” said coach Amanda Augustus.

Augustus likened Susanyi to former Cal standout Mari Andersson, who won the 2009 NCAA doubles championship with Juricova. The fifth-year head coach has paired Susanyi and Juricova on the doubles court, where the freshman’s fervency compliments the senior’s calm demeanor.

Together, Juricova and Susanyi won twice over the weekend but could not match the same level of success as Cal’s longest-established doubles tandem; junior Annie Goransson and sophomore Anett Schutting were not challenged in three matches and are now 9-1 on the year. These were the first signs of amalgamation from the Bears’ doubles lineups, which were in flux for most of the fall.

The weekend evinced the Bears’ improved depth, as the four other players who figure to play in Cal’s dual season did not drop a set in 12 singles matches. Freshman Cecilia Estlander lost only seven games in three singles victories, and the team’s nine players only dropped four sets over three days.

“I think they have gelled as a team much earlier than other teams,” Augustus said. “Depth is going to help us win those close matches against other schools. The deeper we are, the more likely we will be able to prevail in the close team matches.”

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The doubles teams, which were a major concern entering the weekend, have shown definite signs of improvement. Juricova and Susanyi have looked strong, as Juricova’s length at the net compliments Susanyi’s spectacular power from the baseline. Goransson and Schutting, who have had experience playing together in the past, were also solid. In an early match against Santa Clara, Schutting continually baffled her opponents with her serve, and both she and Goransson executed at the net. One of the few points that Santa Clara won in an 8-3 rout was when Goransson fired a volley off her opponent with such force that it bounced back over the net.

The Bears’ third doubles team, Tayler Davis and Cecilia Estlander, were knocked out by the No. 8 seeded Stanford pair of Stacey Tan and Ellen Tsay. Estlander’s serve was on point, and she showed a multitude of looks from the baseline. The match was tied 7-7, but Stanford proved to be too much at the net. Tsay, who knocked out Davis in singles, had more than a few gorgeous deflections at the net, prompting applause from the hometown crowd on multiple occasions.

Surprisingly, the favorites have won out in singles. Seven of the eight quarterfinalists were expected to reach that point, with the exception of Davis, who lost in the second round as a result of a tough draw. The semifinals consist the top four ranked players.

In her quarterfinal match against Marianne Jodoin of Fresno State, Juricova struggled early, hitting potential slams into the net and struggling to find her accuracy. Jodoin, a raucous French-Canadian, was fired up after winning the first set 5-7, yet Juricova came back and dominated, dropping only three games in the closing sets.

Goransson was the other Bear to reach the final eight, but she was defeated by Nicole Gibbs, 1-6, 3-6. Goransson showed signs of life early, cutting the lead to 4-3, but then dropped eight of the final nine games to the crafty Gibbs.

The outcome of the singles semifinals will offer a first look at the layout of the Pac-12 this year. In the other semifinal, Stanford’s Mallory Burdette squares off against Washington’s Denise Dy, the No.2 and No.3 seeds, respectively.

The afternoon’s doubles semifinals will be crucial in the Cal team’s development. Advancing one team, or perhaps two, could mean that these doubles partners stick for the Bears. It is worthy to note, however, that the top west coast doubles team, Stanford’s Burdette and Gibbs, is not in the tournament.

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“You need to be deep,” coach Amanda Augustus said. “You can’t just be top heavy.”

Any discussion of surprises must start with Sofie Susanyi, a freshmen from Hungary, who started the top singles event without a seed and advanced to the semifinals. In her quarterfinal game against Goransson, Susanyi had dozens of remarkable shots, including a forehand winner from the baseline that rocketed past Goransson at the net, just nipping the tramline and leading the crowd at Hellman Tennis Complex to break into applause.

The semifinal match with Tayler Davis cemented Susanyi’s run as valid. Davis has at least three inches on Susanyi, yet the freshmen seemed to have the power advantage early, as she whizzed gorgeous forehands from the baseline that seemed to break the laws of mathematics; Davis looked to have the whole court covered, only see the ball fly past her outstretched racket.

Susanyi was up in the match, 6-1, 2-0, but Davis dug in and outlasted her, as the freshman lacked the same accuracy down the stretch that she had relied on to advance to that round. However, coach Amanda Augustus seemed pleased with Susanyi’s game overall.

“I think I was excited to get to see her on court because I’d been recruiting her,” Augustus said. “She did an unbelievable job considering she’s not feeling great. We’ll be hearing a lot from her.”

The other Cal freshmen, Cecilia Estlander, had a tricky draw and lost in the round of 16 to Hannah James of Arizona State in three sets. Estlander played doubles in the blue flight with senior Stephany Chang, and although they dropped their first game, they came back to win the back-draw.

This tournament kicks off a fall for the team that will decide the final two singles’ spots, presumably after Juricova, Davis, Goransson and Schutting. It is a wide-open competition at this point, as four players (Susanyi, Chang, Estlander, and Duranteau) had great success this weekend and will look to continue that into the fall.

“This is just a starting point — of course I’m happy how we played this weekend but it’s September,” Augustus said. “There’s always stuff to work on, and one of the things I’ll be looking at is how we take this weekend and translate it to next week.”

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