The Stanford women’s tennis team won both the singles and doubles draw at the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) Northwest Regional Championships, which took place at the Taube Family Tennis Stadium, on Tuesday.
Just two players, sophomore Nicole Gibbs and junior Mallory Burdette, are left carrying the torch for Stanford women’s tennis at the NCAA Championship, as both won their second round singles matches this morning and advanced to the quarterfinal round. Gibbs and Burdette also combined to win their first round match in the doubles draw.
The NCAA singles tournament kicked off with singles play yesterday in Athens, Ga., where juniors Mallory Burdette and Stacey Tan and sophomore Nicole Gibbs represented Stanford in the first round. Burdette and Gibbs, both top-five seeds, moved into the second round with easy wins, while the unseeded Tan fell to Rice’s Natalie Beazant.
Four Cardinal players, sophomore Nicole Gibbs, junior Mallory Burdette, junior Stacey Tan and freshman Ellen Tsay, remain in Athens, Ga., to represent Stanford in the NCAA Singles and Doubles Championships this week.
In each of the past two seasons, the No. 5 Stanford women’s tennis team has reached the finals of the NCAA tournament, but the Cardinal will not complete the trifecta, as its season came to an end after a 4-2 loss to USC in the quarterfinals in Athens, Ga.
The Stanford women’s tennis team defeated Northwestern 4-1 in the NCAA tournament round of 16 yesterday morning. With the victory, the Cardinal advanced into the quarterfinals, where it will see a rematch against Pac-12 co-champion USC. Four-seed Stanford (21-1, 9-1 Pac-12) and five-seed USC (23-3, 9-1) shared the Pac-12 regular season title this year, as both teams finished with only one loss in the conference. That one loss for the Trojans was a 4-2 defeat at the hands of the Cardinal just over a month ago.
It was a story of singles success for the Stanford women’s tennis team, as sophomore Nicole Gibbs won the Pac-12 singles championship in Ojai, Calif., this weekend, losing a total of four games in her final four matches.
The Stanford women’s tennis team will close out its regular season with a hugely important conference rematch against cross-bay rival California this weekend. The first matchup, which No. 5 Stanford (16-1, 7-1 Pac-12) won 5-2 in early March, did not count toward Pac-12 standings. With the conference title race completely up in the air after UCLA beat Stanford last weekend, No. 10 Cal (17-5, 8-1 Pac-12) will have the chance to avenge its loss and capture its own piece of the Pac-12 title.