Oct. 17, 2012

USTA/ITA Regional Championships Draws and Results

BERKELEY - With a trip to New York at stake, California will play in the USTA/ITA Northwest Regional Championships from Friday, Oct. 19, through Tuesday, Oct. 23, in Stanford, Calif. The Golden Bears are vying for berths to the USTA/ITA National Indoor Intercollegiate Championships that will take place from Nov. 8-11 in New York City. The champion of each regional event gains automatic entry into the national tournament.

Ten Bears - seniors Tayler Davis - who is ranked 31st nationally - and Annie Goransson (No. 42); junior Kelly Chui, Alice Duranteau and 22nd-ranked Anett Schutting; sophomores Zsofi Susanyi (No. 5), Cecilia Estlander and Laura Posylkin; and freshmen Klara Fabikova and Lynn Chi - will compete at Stanford. All 10 will play in the singles draw. Cal's doubles teams will consist of Susanyi and Schutting, Fabikova and Chui, Goransson and Davis, Chi and Duranteau, and Estlander and Posylkin.

The following 17 teams compose the northwest region: Cal, UC Davis, Eastern Washington, Fresno State, Gonzaga, Portland, Portland State, Oregon, Sacramento State, Saint Mary's, San Francisco, San Jose State, Santa Clara, Seattle, Stanford, Washington and Washington State.

Last Year at the Regional
Cal completed its run at the 2011 USTA/ITA Northwest Regional Championships on Oct. 24 in Stanford, Calif. The Golden Bears had a pair of teams in the doubles semifinals and top-seeded No. 1-ranked senior Jana Juricova was in the singles semifinals.

In the singles draw, Juricova had reeled off four consecutive wins including an impressive three-set victory over No. 42-ranked Marianne Jodoin of Fresno State in the quarters. In a rematch, Juricova drew fourth-seeded No. 7 Nicole Gibbs of Stanford. The two had met in the semifinals of the 2011 NCAA singles championship as well. Juricova won that meeting in three sets before she went on to claim the NCAA crown.

This time, Juricova won the first set, 6-4, but Gibbs responded to come away with a pair of 6-2 scores in the second and third sets. Though Juricova exited the tournament as a semifinalist, her finish at the All-American Championships at the beginning of October qualified her for a berth in the 2011 USTA/ITA National Indoor Tennis Championships in New York, Nov. 3-6.

Cal had one doubles team on each side of the doubles semifinals bracket at Stanford, but both were eliminated in upsets. The Bears' second-seeded duo of Juricova and Zsofi Susanyi was defeated by Clarisse Baca and Maria Meliuk of Sacramento State, 8-3; and the third-seeded No. 53-ranked tandem of Annie Goransson and Anett Schutting was handed an 8-4 loss by Stanford's eighth-seeded team of Stacey Tan and Ellen Tsay.

Last Time on the Court
Cal won four titles on Oct. 14 at the Saint Mary's Invitational, with fourth-seeded Lynn Chi beating third-seeded teammate Klara Fabikova, 6-4, 6-3, for the Red Singles crown, Kelly Chui claiming the White Singles championship and the Golden Bears taking two titles in doubles.

Chui knocked off Sacramento State's Katharina Knoebl in her final, 6-1, 6-4.

Second-seeded Fabikova and Chi teamed up to win the Red Doubles final - dominating Jade Frampton-Danielle Flores of Saint Mary's, 8-1 - while second-seeded Alice Duranteau and Laura Posylkin captured the White Doubles title with an 8-5 victory over San Francisco's Marina Nikolic-Melinda Akerbrant.

Next Time
Those Bears who qualify will compete in the USTA/ITA National Indoor Intercollegiate Championships from Nov. 8-11 in New York City. Besides the regional champions, the other players who earn entry into that tournament are the consolation champions, doubles finalists, men's singles quarterfinalists and women's singles semifinalists from the ITA Men's and Riviera/ITA Women's All-American Championships as well as the winners of the USTA/ITA National Small College Super Bowl.

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.