Oct. 19, 2012

Cal Women's Tennis Fans,

I bring to you another installment of our newsletter with a recap of our results at the Saint Mary's Invitational, some more exciting news about Raquel Kops-Jones and her professional tennis career, and a look forward to our tournament this weekend.

Cal Wins 4 Titles at Saint Mary's Invitational
The Cal Women's Team dominated the Saint Mary's Invitational last weekend, capturing titles in all of the draws they played in. The Red Singles Flight featured Calls Alice Duranteau, Lynn Chi and Klara Fabikova as three of the four semifinalists, with Lynn and Klara facing off in the finals. Lynn won a close-fought match, beating Klara 6-4, 6-3. In the White Singles Flight, Kelly Chui knocked off Sacramento States Katharina Knoebl 6-1, 6-4 to capture the title.

In doubles action Lynn Chi and Klara Fabikova, the second-seeded team in the Red Flight, breezed through the bracket and won the title convincingly, beating Saint Mary's Jade Frampton and Danielle Flores 8-1 in the finals. In the White Flight, Alice Duranteau and Laura Posylkin, also seeded second, teamed up and captured a title as well, besting USFs Marina Nikolic and Melinda Akerbrant 8-5 in the finals.

We have always done well at this tournament, but this is probably our best result ever at Saint Mary's. These results show how hard our girls have worked to improves their games and these results help justify to them all the time and effort they have put in. Overall this is a great confidence booster as we head into the ITA Northwest Regionals next weekend, and hopefully we can carry the momentum from this tournament into the next.

Players in the Pros
It was another successful week for Raquel Kops-Jones, as she and her doubles partner Abigail Spears added another doubles title to their record-setting year. Last week Kops-Jones and Spears won their fourth doubles title this year in Osaka, Japan, beating Kimiko Date-Krumm and Heather Wilson in the finals 6-1, 6-4. This keeps them within striking distance of Maria Kirilenko and Nadia Petrova for the final spot in the 2012 TEB BNP Paribas WTA Championships. The final spot will be decided this week, depending upon which team does better in Moscow this week; and the final berth could be decided if both teams make it to the semifinals where they would play each other.

Congrats to Raquel on her great year and good luck to her this weekend.

Looking Ahead
This weekend the entire Cal Women's Tennis Team will be traveling down to Stanford to compete in the ITA Northwest Regional Championships. Play begins on Friday, Oct. 19, and continues until Tuesday, Oct. 23. The winners of the event will receive an automatic bid to the USTA/ITA National Indoor Intercollegiate Championships, taking place in New York City from Nov. 8-11. Please come down to Stanford and help make it part of Bear Territory.

Thanks for your support; we look forward to seeing you this weekend.

GO BEARS!!!

- Amanda