Sept. 26, 2012

2012 Cal Nike Invitational Draws and Results

BERKELEY - California women's tennis opens the fall season with the Cal Nike Invitational that runs from Friday, Sept. 28, through Sunday, Sept. 30, at the Hellman Tennis Complex and Channing Tennis Courts. The 13-team field includes 80-plus players from Cal, Fresno State, Pacific, UC Davis, BYU, Arizona State, Nevada, Santa Clara, Minnesota, Saint Mary's, San Jose State, Sacramento State and San Francisco for a three-day tournament that will showcase three singles flights, and three doubles flights (Gold, Blue and White).

Most of the action will take place at Hellman, with some matches at Channing. Friday's action will begin at 8 a.m., with Saturday's matches starting at 9 a.m. and Sunday's tennis also beginning at 9 a.m. Each day will begin with doubles competition and end with singles.

The tournament webpage lists the players, draws and each day's results.

Former NCAA champion and current Cal undergraduate assistant coach Jana Juricova won last year's Gold Flight singles title and teamed with current junior Anett Schutting to claim the Gold Flight doubles championship. In her final season as a Golden Bear, Juricova defeated then-junior teammate Tayler Davis, 6-0. 6-0, in the singles final. Juricova/Schutting beat Sacramento State's tandem of Clarisse Baca and Maria Meliuk, 9-7, to hoist the Gold Flight doubles trophy.

Scouting the Field
The Cal Nike Invitational will include some of the top talent in the nation, including the Golden Bears. Here is a list of the players in the field listed in the ITA Preseason Rankings for 2012-13:

Singles
No. 5 Zsofi Susanyi, California - completed a stellar freshman season last spring with a 41-8 singles record and the first appearance by a Cal freshman in the NCAA singles semifinal
No. 22 Anett Schutting, California - fell in the round of 64 in NCAA singles last spring
No. 31 Tayler Davis, California - played in the NCAA round of 64 last season
No. 41 Katie Le, Santa Clara
No. 42 Annie Goransson, California - recorded a 34-7 overall record, won 15-straight singles matches and reached the quarterfinals of the Pac-12 Championships last season
No. 88 Catherine Isip, Saint Mary's
No. 93 Natallia Pintusava, Minnesota

Doubles
No. 3 Goransson/Schutting, California - Goransson and Schutting reached the round of 16 in 2012 NCAA doubles
No. 13 Susanyi/Klara Fabikova, California
No. 46 Agrawal/Modoc, Fresno State

Last Time Out
As a team, the 2011-12 Bears ended the 2011-12 season ranked No. 7 in the poll, after falling in the NCAA Tournament's quarterfinal round to top-ranked UCLA, 4-1. Zsofi Susanyi recorded Cal's only win against the Bruins, topping McCall Jones, 6-2, 6-1.

Susanyi later became the first freshman in program history to advance as far as the national singles semifinal. She dropped the match to Stanford's Mallory Burdette, 6-2, 6-2. The young Bear had beaten USC's Sabrina Santamaria in the quarterfinals, 6-2, 7-6(4), with Jana Juricova - the defending 2011 NCAA champ - losing to Stanford's Nicole Gibbs in the same round, 6-2, 7-5.

In NCAA doubles, Jurivoca and Susanyi advanced to the quarterfinals, before succumbing to Georgia's Gilchrist and Gullickson, 6-1, 6-3.

Next Time
Cal competes in the ITA/Riviera All-American Championships from Oct. 2-7 in Pacific Palisades, Calif.

A Golden Olympics for the Golden Bears
A total of 46 Golden Bear athletes, coaches and staff members represented Cal during the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, and together, they brought home a school-record-tying 17 medals (11 gold, 1 silver, 5 bronze). The Bears have won 50 medals over the past three Olympics (16 in 2004, 17 in 2008, 17 in 2012), and they have captured 178 medals all-time (99 gold).

Cal No. 1 Public University in the Country
The University of California is the No. 1-ranked public university in the United States, according to U.S. News and World Report. The faculty has won 22 Nobel Prizes, including nine current members, while 28 alumni have received a Nobel Prize. A National Research Council analysis of U.S. universities concluded that the campus has the largest number of highly ranked graduate programs in the country (48 of 52). Cal also has a long commitment to public service, with more than 4,000 students annually doing volunteer work and more than 3,000 Peace Corps participants all-time.