SportsScope : Bruin Women Awaiting Word on NCAA Tennis Championships

The NCAA women’s tennis team and individual championships will begin Wednesday at UCLA’s Los Angeles Tennis Center. Teams will be announced today and individuals on Friday.

The fourth-ranked Bruins (18-5 and 6-4 in the Pacific 10 Conference, who finished the regular season last week with a 6-3 loss to No. 3 USC, are expected to receive a berth in the team championships. No. 17 Pepperdine (21-3) could also be invited.

Team competition begins Wednesday, with the finals at 1 p.m. May 15. Singles and doubles for individuals will start May 16, with the singles final on May 19 at 5 p.m. and the doubles final afterward that evening.

The No. 4 Pepperdine men’s tennis team (21-4 as the week began), will play host to No. 9 UCLA (16-8 at the start of the week) in the final regular-season dual match for both at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday in Malibu.

In February, the Bruins defeated Pepperdine, 6-3, at UCLA, but the Waves were missing several players because of illness and defaulted the final singles and doubles matches.

Last week UCLA lost its final Pac-10 match at USC, 5-4. Stanford finished first with a 10-0 conference record, USC was second at 7-3 and the Bruins were third at 6-4.

A 97-66 winner over USC last week, the UCLA men’s track team will try to qualify more performers for the NCAA championships when the Bruins compete at Saturday’s Modesto Relays. UCLA has already qualified runners for several events, the 1,600-meter relay team and five men in field events.

The dual-meet win over the Trojans made it the fourth consecutive 9-0 season for Coach Bob Larsen and his Bruins, defending NCAA champions. UCLA double winners at USC were junior David Wilson and senior Kevin Young. Wilson won the hammer throw at 213-11 and the shot put with a 57-4 3/4, and Young the long jump at 24-2 1/2 and the 400-meter intermediate hurdles in 50.37.

The Bruin women defeated USC, 82-54. Bruin Kris Larson won three events with career best marks of 164-8 in the javelin and 49-3 in the shot put and a 181-10 in the discus that broke the meet record of 178-2 by former Bruin Toni Lutjens. Gail Devers also was a triple winner, taking the 100 meters in 11.41, the 100 hurdles in 12.95 and the long jump in 21-9 1/2.

Rained out of last week’s road double-headers with Oregon and Oregon State, the top-ranked UCLA women’s softball team (42-5 overall and 12-2 for first in the Pac-10) will play its last home conference double-header on Friday, facing California (35-19, 5-9) at 1 p.m. at the Sunset Canyon field.

The games with the Oregon schools are expected to be rescheduled for some time next week.

Bruin Janice Parks leads the conference with 6 home runs and 36 runs batted in and is fifth with 46 hits. Teammates Lorraine Maynez and Shanna Flynn are second and fifth in hits, with Maynez having 50 and Flynn, 45.

UCLA sophomore pitcher Lisa Longaker has the most wins (23), strikeouts (185) and saves (3) in the Pac-10 and her earned run average of 0.16 also tops the conference.

The UCLA women’s golf team finished second in last week’s Pac-10 championships at Redmond, Wash., with a score of 1,230 to 1,173 for first-place Arizona State. In individual competition for the Bruins, Debbi Koyama and Valerie Pamard tied for sixth with scores of 305, Jean Zedlitz tied for 12th with a 311 and Lana Perhacs and Camilla Karlsson tied for 22nd with 319 each. Perhacs received honorable mention for the all-conference team.