EDWARD LIN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Junior Sara
Walker sends a forehand return against Duke earlier this
season.
By Eric Perez
Daily Bruin Contributor
Memories are continually made on college tennis courts across
America. While the No. 7 UCLA women’s tennis team’s
season is winding down and accelerating fast into the Pac-10 and
NCAA championships, the two seniors on the squad know that they are
at a point in the season where sentimentality can still coexist
with the team’s collective mission of an NCAA title.
That mission will come to a test as the Bruins travel up to the
Bay Area to face No. 20 Cal on Friday and No. 4 Stanford on
Saturday.
For senior team captain Petya Marinova, the only player on the
team with four years of tennis at UCLA, it will be about an
important weekend in which she feels that she must keep her
teammates on an even keel.
“As a team captain, I have a responsibility to make sure
my teammates are OK and ready to go when the matches come,”
Marinova said. “Because I’ve been here for four years
I’ve gone through it all and I’ve experienced it all;
and it’s going to be interesting to see what happens against
Cal and Stanford.”
For senior team captain Catherine Hawley, this weekend will be a
homecoming of sorts as she will be the only native Californian in
the lineup against Stanford.
“It’s exciting, and I’m looking forward to
it,” said Hawley, who hails from Carmel Valley and will have
friends and various family members in attendance, including her
parents, at both matches.
Hawley will also be reunited with her long-time personal coach
and mentor Greg Anderson, who, according to Hawley, was influential
in helping her decide what to do while she spent her first year of
college tennis unhappy at the University of Richmond. Anderson
encouraged Hawley to transfer to UCLA.
“You build memories in an elite tennis program like
UCLA,” Anderson said. “Catherine is going to have those
memories forever, she’ll be telling her kids about it when
she’s 40.”
For Anderson, Saturday promises to one of his proudest moments
in eight years of coaching ““ a moment that has been delayed.
Last year he made the trip to Palo Alto only to find that the match
was rained out. This year, with the Bay Area forecast calling for
clear skies, Anderson can only speculate on the emotions he will
experience come Saturday.
“Last year was one of the proudest moment for me as coach,
to know she was competing at the highest level, and I think this
year I’ll feel more like a proud parent that sees their kid
succeed,” Anderson said. “UCLA against Stanford. It
doesn’t get any better than that as far as college tennis
goes.”