Juniors Melinda Akerbrant and Andrea Gaitan did not meet with the team at 6 a.m. and could not play due to respectively wrist and knee injuries. So we left San Fran- cisco with seven players out of nine. Most of my teammates slept on the way and the sun was hardly up when we finally got to Stanford.
We only had one court and an hour to warm up before the doubles start at 8 a.m. and everyone felt good hitting the ball after such an early wake up and a long drive. Unfortunately, right at the end of the warm up, it started raining.
At 1:30 p.m., the rain finally stopped and we drove to another site where the three USF doubles teams were supposed to play; but when we arrived to this site, all the courts were completely wet and some referees and coaches were squeegeeing them.
The pair Julia Wartenburger- Cecilia Gratian was first to go on the court to finally play after waiting for more than seven hours. They played against sophomore Jessica Agra and senior Carmen Pham from Santa Clara. My teammates were too inconsistent along the match and their dynamic and positiveness were so low that they did not play a great match and logically lost 8-1.
On the other hand, sophomores Blair Reed and Yurie Hashigutchi showed great skills and patterns and had high energy; however, their opponents from USC, Katie Le and Kacie Wagner, were solid; my teammates were made mistakes at crucial moments and they ended losing 8-4. Cecile Duriez and Alana McMahon won without problem against Anna Guzman and Chau Truong from University of San Jose State, 8-2.
Julia Wartenburger was hap- py with her match against a girl from Washington State even though she lost, because she found some good sensations back and she was positive the entire game. Yurie Hashigutchi played the first set very well against Katie Le from USC, but after she lost it, her focus and confidence went away and she lost the second set easily. Cecilia Gratian played Jocelyn Davis, a girl from Cal Poly against who she had won last year in the same tourna- ment; my teammate did not play a good match which made it hard to win against such a good player, and so she lost 6/3-6/3.
Blair Reed also played against a freshman from Cal Poly that will probably be one of the top players in this team; she showed im- pressive skills and was too good that day.
Reed lost 6/1-6/3. Even though I lost too against Andgela Kankaras from Washington State, I played well, was aggressive, but made too many mistakes while my opponent was very consistent and powerful.
Cecile Duriez played a long and intense match against Alina Savchuck from Sac. State; both players were powerful but Duriez remained more consistent and ended winning 7/6-6/1. As she had won her first match, she got to play the second round against a girl from University of Pacific and won very easily this time (6/1-6/1).
Because of the uncertain weather, the girls who had lost in doubles and singles did not get to play the consolations so only Duriez and McMahon had to go back to Stanford the next day. It was raining in Palo Alto when they got there and once again, they had to wait for the rain to stop and for the second round of singles to play.The rain did not last and my teammates started their doubles at 1:30 p.m. Tired from the long previous day and facing really good opponents from Oregon State, they lost 8-0. Duriez was supposed to play 10 minutes after the end of the doubles, but the rain came back and did not seem be about to stop. Finally, tired of wait- ing and wasting time, coach Somers decided that my teammate would not play singles and they went back home.
Jessy Mekpoh is a member of the women’s tennis team.
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