NCAA Women’s Tennis Tournament : Pepperdine Moves Into 2nd Round

For Gualberto Escudero, coach of the women’s tennis team at Pepperdine, there were times this year when the chain-link fences around the courts looked like prison walls.

And that was before the Waves’ season even started.

His projected No. 5 singles player was dismissed from school for disciplinary reasons, which, according to Escudero, was the first time that had happened to an athlete at the Malibu school.

Then, Pepperdine’s No. 6 singles player miscounted her credits and wound up academically ineligible.

So, coming off a 9-22 season, Escudero was reduced to searching high and low for an extra player, finally uncovering one in an advanced tennis class.

At that point, 9-22 must have been looking pretty decent.

Which is why--jumping ahead to Wednesday at the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. team tournament at UCLA--16th-seeded Pepperdine wasn’t treating a 5-2 first-round victory over No. 17 Texas nonchalantly.

There were pictures being snapped. There were hugs all around. And then there were some more pictures.

After all, this was a first. The Pepperdine women had never before won a first-round NCAA match. Escudero can’t remember whether the Waves were 0 for 4 or 0 for 5 in the team competition. He was much more interested in remembering Anna Brunstrom’s winning volley in No. 2 doubles to clinch the match. Brunstrom and Janna Kovacevich defeated Diana Merrett and Stacie Otten of Texas, 6-0, 6-4.

“I’ve been telling them all week long that we had never won an NCAA match,” Escudero said. “I wanted them to take it as a sign to win this time.”

“We made history!” said No. 6 singles player Nikki Lusty.

But the Waves’ No. 1 player, Ginger Helgeson, said she didn’t know anything about the losing streak until she heard Escudero talking about it afterward.

Helgeson, however, created her own bit of personal history with a 7-5, 7-5 victory over Anne Grousbeck of Texas. It was her most significant win in collegiate tennis because Grousbeck is ranked No. 4 in the country to Helgeson’s No. 9.

Furthermore, Helgeson rallied from a 1-4 first-set deficit and managed to stay cool when Grousbeck delivered a couple of verbal blasts at her.

“If she’s going to come at me, what am I going to do, go after her?” Helgeson said. “You say things out of the heat of the moment. You get used to it as long as you don’t take it personally.”

What gave Helgeson more trouble was her own game once she took the lead. Almost every time she broke Grousbeck, Grousbeck would break back in the second set.

And when Helgeson reached her first match point in the 10th game of the second set, the nerves showed when she hit a weak forehand into the net off Grousbeck’s return. But, two games later and on her third match point, Helgeson won it when Grousbeck netted a backhand.

“She has a habit of coming back when she’s down,” Escudero said. “I don’t like it. I’d rather have her win from being ahead.”

Which is what Helgeson did. Her somewhat unexpected result off-set a surprise at No. 3 singles. Pepperdine sophomore Carrie Crisell, who attended Huntington Beach Marina High, lost to Michelle Carrier, 7-5, 6-4. Crisell hadn’t lost since the first match of the season.

“If there was one match I would have bet on, all my money on, it would have been that one,” Escudero said.

Instead, the Waves got their other singles victories from Kovacevich at No. 2, Brunstrom at No. 4 and Lusty at No. 6.

Pepperdine has a stiffer test today against top-ranked Florida, a team so strong that it has last year’s singles finalist, Shaun Stafford, playing No. 2. Then again, no one ever expected Pepperdine to reach the second round, much less record a 22-3 record after what happened before this season.

“Everyone was in a state of distress,” Escudero said of the preseason mood. “I told the players, ‘We’ll just have to do this without them.’ We weren’t going to talk about it anymore. We were going to get rid of all the ifs. Today, for us, is only the beginning.”

Tennis Notes

Despite the absence of No. 2 singles player Lesley Hakala of Santee, Calif., a surprising no-show on Wednesday, No. 14-seeded BYU defeated No. 18 South Carolina, 5-4, in a first-round match. “It was a surprise to us,” said BYU Coach Ann Valentine of Hakala’s absence. BYU, however, needed a 4-6, 6-3, 7-5 victory by Mary Beth Young and Sheri Yandle at No. 3 doubles to clinch the match. Other winners included No. 5 California, No. 6 Kentucky, No. 13 Trinity and No. 19 Duke.