Conn Falls to Roe in Division II Semifinals

Missy Conn had another big hitter muttering to herself Friday, but Nancy Roe of Northern Colorado regained her composure early on and took apart the Cal State Northridge junior in the semifinals of the NCAA Division II women’s tennis championships.

Roe’s 6-4, 6-1 victory at CSUN advanced her to today’s 10 a.m. final, where she’ll meet doubles partner Sandra Elliott, the No. 2 seed and a 6-1, 2-6, 6-3 winner Friday over third-seeded Edna Olivarez of Cal State Los Angeles.

Afterward, Roe and Elliott will combine forces again to defend their Division II doubles championship against unseeded Julie Gillespie and Christine Ryan, Cal Poly Pomona’s No. 2 doubles team.

Conn and Susan Campbell were expected to be in the final, but they lost to Gillespie and Ryan, 6-2, 6-2, while Roe and Elliott were eliminating Cal Poly Pomona’s No. 1 doubles team, Mary Holycross and Xenia Anastasiadou, 6-2, 6-1.

It was an inglorious exit for Conn, whose patient, defensive style had frustrated two seeded opponents, including No. 1 Christina Bokelund of Southern Illinois Edwardsville.

Conn broke Roe’s serve twice in the first four games to take a 3-1 lead. Her passive style had Roe talking to herself. After hitting one volley long, the blonde sophomore screamed: “That’s sick.”

But Roe, exhorted by Coach Rosemary Fri to “keep breathing and keep relaxed,” settled down and started beating Conn at her own game, returning everything Conn hit at her and forcing Conn, who usually thrives on her opponent’s mistakes, into unforced errors. Conn never held her serve again after the first game.

“I didn’t have the same kind of concentration today,” Conn said. “I was mentally tired, mentally burned out.”

Roe attributed her slow start to nerves. Of her strong finish, she said: “I started getting a little more confident and a little more relaxed. I just calmed down.”

And now she’ll face her teammate in the final. They’ve met once before this season, Roe handing Elliott one of her two losses, 4-6, 7-5, 6-2, last November in the ITCA/Rolex Small College Central Regional in Provo, Utah.

Elliott and Roe are both former all-state high school basketball players and two-time state high school tennis champions in Colorado. The similarities, however, end there.

Roe, the more volatile of the two, is a right-hander who prefers to stick close to the baseline.

Elliott, a left-hander whose close-cropped black hair, thick glasses and friendly manner give her a deceiving appearance, prefers to serve and volley.

“She looks like a librarian with that hair and those glasses,” an opposing coach said of Elliott. “But she’s got a compact, precise game. She’s very pleasant. She smiles a lot. But then she drills your butt.”

Elliott lost in the Division II singles final as a freshman, lost to the eventual champion in the semifinals last season and has won two Division II doubles titles.

She is 28-2 this season and has lost only five sets. Roe is 22-9, but is having “probably the best week she’s had at UNC,” Fri said. In doubles, they are 23-1 and have lost only three sets, two of them to CSUN’s Conn and Campbell, who beat them last month.

They say they’d rather not face each other in the final--”I’d really prefer playing somebody I didn’t know,” Elliott said--but they’re the only ones left. They’ve eliminated everybody else.