Women's tennis caught California dreaming

By Chris Pettijohn     2/11/10 6:00pm

Last weekend, the women's tennis team made the long trip to sunny California in hopes of catching a couple of victories, and perhaps some rays as an added bonus. The weekend ended up decently, and the Owls (3-3) got some rays- but no victories were to be found.

Rice faced its toughest test of the season, battling No. 41 Pepperdine University (2-3) and No. 12 University of California-Los Angeles (5-0) in its first extended road trip of the season. The weekend's matches began ominously, as the prospect of rainy conditions in California forced the team to change its travel plans. The team postponed its departure to last Saturday instead of the previous Thursday, playing Pepperdine as scheduled on Sunday but waiting until last Monday to take on UCLA.

Rice came out strong in the doubles matches against the Waves (2-3). The No. 1 doubles team of senior Julie Chao and sophomore Ana Guzman played aggressively to win their match 8-5, while the No. 3 doubles team, senior Rebecca Lin and junior Rebekka H?nle, suffered a difficult 8-4 loss. With the doubles point hinging on the No. 2 contest, the 44th-ranked team of junior Jessica Jackson and sophomore Alex Rasch fell into an early 7-3 hole. But after fighting off five match points, the team slowly crept its way back into the match, point by point, and ended up taking it 9-7.

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Unfortunately, the team could not translate the momentum of winning the doubles point into victories during the singles matches. Pepperdine came out with renewed vigor and quickly won the first five of six sets. Despite fighting hard, both Chao and H?nle were each defeated in straight sets at the top of the ladder. Jackson, Lin and Rasch, each of whom lost the first set, came back to win their second sets, yet all three fell in the third. The one outlier was Guzman, who won her first set, lost the second and took the third to win her match 6-1, 4-6, 7-5 and provide the second point in Rice's 5-2 defeat.

The Owls next faced No. 12 UCLA, a national championship-caliber team, which proved to be Rice's toughest test thus far this season. One 7-0 shutout later, Rice understood just why the Bruins are in the national championship discussion.

The match against UCLA was a special one for Head Coach Elizabeth Schmidt, offering her a return to her alma mater where she played only a decade ago.

But the homecoming was short-lived, as UCLA's two nationally ranked players had their way with their opponents: No. 5 Yasmin Schnack defeated 73rd-ranked H?nle in straight sets, and No. 41 Andrea Remynse easily moved past Jackson.

During this match, due to concerns over the possibility of rain, the singles matches were played before the doubles matches. Both teams were affected by this switch, but UCLA was the only one that was able to play through the change-up: No singles player on Rice took a set away from the opposing Bruins.

A lone bright spot for the Owls was the doubles team of Jackson and Rasch, who were Rice's only victorious players during the match. They took their match 7-6 (7-5), in what was a hard-fought victory ending with Rice on top of the tiebreaker.

The two teams were more closely matched than one would surmise from the score, but only the Bruins proved victorious during the big points.

"We have to learn to be composed and trust yourself in those big situations, and I think that was the difference, [because] UCLA did," Schmidt said.

If some lesson was learned from the rough loss, it will need to be implemented today at noon when the team takes on the University of Arizona at Jake Hess Tennis Stadium. The Owls will then returned to ranked competition, taking on No. 73 Texas Tech University Sunday at 11 a.m.

There's a bit of pride at stake in these two contests, as the Owls lost to both teams last year by a score of 4-3 to Arizona and 5-2 to Texas Tech.

"We are very confident," Jackson said. "[We are] going to work our socks off to get these rival matches under our belts.

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