USTA News

The #3 seed Stanford Cardinal upset #1 seed and 2009 National Champions from UC Berkeley to set up an all Stanford final at the USTA Northern California Tennis on Campus Section Championship held October 30-31 at Stanford University.

 

Schools competing, at the 2010 USTA Campus Championship Northern California, some with 2 and 3 teams, included UC Berkeley, Stanford, Univ. of Nevada Reno, UC Davis, St. Mary's, Sacramento State, Univ. of San Francisco, UC Santa Cruz, City College of SF, Chico State and Evergreen College.  (complete results attached below)

 

Two teams entered the competition for the first time, University of Nevada, Reno and Evergreen College, San Jose. "The new teams arrived so positive and enthusiastic, they weren’t overwhelmed at all," said USTA NorCal Tennis on Campus Coordinator, Hilary Somers. Members of the Evergreen College team were comprised mostly of the "40 something" age players who enjoyed the collegiate competition.

 

Saturday started with rain and the official drawing to place the 22 teams into pools and assign courts. Somers was prepared with a variety of creative match formats in the event of rain delays but with nearly 200 college students on hand, many in costume, courts were quickly ready for play.

 

By the end of Saturday’s pool play, teams were placed into Sunday Gold and Silver brackets based on results. After two rounds of Sunday play, Stanford Cardinal and Stanford Tree both advanced to the semifinals to play UC Berkeley Gold and the City College of SF Rams respectively.  Unofficial Stanford Tennis Club coach and former teammate, Amy Brown said, "The Stanford Cardinal win over #1 seed UC Berkeley was definitely helped by two 6-0 victories from our singles players but," she added, "The real surprise was how the entire Stanford Tree team really stepped up to reach the finals."

 

Josh Lovert Captain for Stanford Tree and Chris Alvarez Captain for Stanford Cardinal chose to not play the final match stating "we’re all tired and we’ve agreed to play-off at a very spirited practice next week."

 

A college or university can only be represented by one team at the USTA National Campus Championships so the Stanford finalist teams will select their travel squad from both rosters. Alvarez said with a smile that the roster selections will be made "Coach Harbaugh style" referring to the no nonsense, high-energy, fully committed players recruited by their football coach.

 

USTA National Campus Championships will be held in North Carolina, April 7-9, 2011. To defray travel costs, Stanford Tennis club President, Stacy Kaufman said, "We’ll take advantage of fundraising opportunities offered through the campus club department as well as utilizing the USTA NorCal Fast Serve Booth at the SAP Men’s Pro tournament."

 

The Tennis on Campus (TOC) program continues to grow in numbers of players and number of schools participating. According to Somers, "We’re always looking for that motivated tennis player who wants to get a club tennis program started at their school."

 

Former UC Davis Tennis on Campus leader, Jimmy Liang is the new chairman of the USTA NorCal Collegiate Committee with a focus on growing the number of well organized, quality TOC events. Somers added, "We know they’re on a college students budget so USTA can offer assistance to teams for travel costs or help with the cost of hosting a TOC event."

 

USTA NorCal extends a big thank you to Hobee’s Restaurant of Palo Alto who once again provided breakfast and fruit for the players and to Stanford University for providing the courts for this event.  For questions or more information regarding the Tennis on Campus program, conatct Hilary Somers.

Pool Play