By Eric Perez
Daily Bruin Contributor
Wake up calls suck.
But the one the No. 7 UCLA women’s team received at 7:45
Texas time just sucked a little more. UCLA head coach Stella
Sampras called her players at that time to inform them that instead
of playing outside in weather ranging from 20 to 30 degrees, they
would be making an hour and a half drive from Austin to San
Antonio.
Upon arriving at the Thousand Oaks Racquet club in San Antonio,
it was then decided that they would begin with their singles
matches and play the doubles point only if necessary. The Bruins
(8-1) then lost their first match of the season to the University
of Texas Longhorns (7-0) by a 4-2 score.
“We had a lot of things to adjust to,” said senior
Petya Marinova, who said it took her roughly the first set to get
used to the harder and faster indoor surface.
“We didn’t really know where we were going to play
when we got to Texas. It was hard to sleep last night because of
the travel and the time difference; when coach Sampras called us it
was really at 6:45 in California time,” she added.
Playing the singles points first threw UCLA off its general
winning formula. The Bruins and their strong doubles squad are
usually accustomed to going into singles with a 1-0 lead, but the
match began promising nonetheless.
Freshman Megan Bradley, playing at No. 2, dispatched Joanne
Masongsong 6-1, 6-0 in a little over a half hour. Finishing so
quickly left Bradley in an uncomfortable position. “Not
having played doubles first, it felt like there wasn’t much I
could do but sit and watch. I never really experienced that before,
and it was hard,” Bradley said.
Then Marinova lost her match to Katie Ruckert 6-4, 6-3. Freshman
Sarah Gregg then lost to Kaysie Smashey 6-4, 6-3 which put the
Bruins behind 1-2. Sophomore Lauren Fisher defeated Lindsay Blau
6-4, 7-5 to tie the match up at 2-2. Then Catherine Hawley lost to
Rebekay Forney 6-3, 6-1. The shocker of the day came when Sara
Walker, at the top spot, lost to Vladika Uhlirova 7-5, 2-6, 7-5.
With the match out of hand at 2-4, and with a flight to catch, the
doubles point was not played.
Despite the unfortunate succession of events, the Bruins remain
resolved to chalk this up to experience, albeit probably a very bad
one.
“It’s our first loss of the season, but we’ll
move on and learn from this,” Sampras said.
“We’ve got a lot of matches coming up, such as USC next
week. This team is so good we can’t afford to let this get us
down.”