SportsScope : Bruin Women Start in Second Round of Tennis Championships

UCLA and USC open play today in the second round of the NCAA women’s tennis team championships at UCLA.

The fourth-seeded Bruins (18-5 overall) will face the winner of the match between No. 13 Trinity and No. 20 Harvard at noon at the Los Angeles Tennis Center, while third-seeded USC (17-4) will meet the winner of the No. 18 South Carolina-No. 14 Brigham Young match at 2 p.m. at the Sunset Canyon courts.

In another second-round match today, No. 1 Florida will face the winner of the No. 16 Pepperdine-No. 7 Texas match at 9 a.m. at the Los Angeles Tennis Center.

Team competition began Wednesday. Third-round matches will be at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. Friday at both tournament sites. Semifinal matches will be at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Saturday and the finals at 1 p.m. Sunday at the center.

The NCAA singles and doubles championships for individuals will start at 8 a.m. Monday and continue through Thursday. The singles final is at 5 p.m. Thursday and the doubles final that evening at the center. Pairings for individual play will be announced Saturday.

UCLA will be represented in singles by Allyson Cooper, Joni Urban, Maria LaFranchi, Jessica Emmons and freshmen Kirsten Dreyer and Stella Sampras. Bruin doubles teams are Cooper-Sampras, Urban-Emmons and Colinne Bartel-LaFranchi.

Pepperdine singles players will be Ginger Helgeson and freshman Janna Kovacevich, and Kovacevich will play doubles with Anna Brunstrom.

USC will have four players in singles: Trisha Laux, Mary Norwood, Stephanie London and Lupita Novelo. USC doubles teams will be Ginny Purdy-Novelo and London-Norwood.

Five top high school tennis players, including one from Japan, have signed letters of intent to play for UCLA next year. They are Bill Barber of Brandywine, Md.; Bill Behrens of Rolling Hills, interscholastic champion at the recent Ojai Tournament; Dean Cohen of Miami Beach; Mark Quinney of Eugene, Ore., and Ryuzo Tsujano, junior national champion of Japan and also a member of that country’s Davis Cup team.

UCLA Coach Glenn Bassett said the outlook for 1989 should be good with the five incoming freshmen, seven returning players from this year’s squad and a healthy Dan Nahirny, the All-American who missed this season with a knee injury. He said the newcomers and veterans should “give us our best team depth in many years.”

At the team’s awards banquet, junior Buff Farrow, the squad’s No. 1 singles player, was named the most valuable player, and sophomore Brian Garrow, most improved. Garrow was the Pacific 10 Conference Southern Division singles championship at Ojai.

Last week the No. 9 Bruins improved to 17-8 overall with a 5-3 win over No. 5 UC Irvine, avenging an earlier 5-2 loss to the Anteaters. The decisive UCLA doubles victories were by Patrick Galbraith-Garrow and Giora Payes-Paul Scholtz.

UCLA is awaiting a bid to the NCAA championships, May 20-28 at the University of Georgia in Athens.

The top-ranked UCLA women’s softball team, which clinched the Pac-10 title last week, will conclude the regular season in a double header at 1:30 p.m. Saturday at No. 13 Cal Poly Pomona (45-6 overall and 28-8 in the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn.).

Last week the Bruins (45-6 overall) split a pair with California and swept two from Oregon to finish with a 15-3 conference record and a one-game edge over Arizona.

Lisa Longaker pitched all four games and won three to improve to 26-2, breaking the former school record of 24 victories by Debbie Doom in 1984. She gave up 17 hits and four runs in 33 innings, striking out 20 and walking only one.

Pairings for the NCAA regionals will be announced Monday. The Bruins are expected to play host for a regional the weekend of May 20-22. The NCAA World Series will be held May 25-29 in Sunnyvale, where earlier this year the Bruins won the Bud Light National Invitational Tournament.

The UCLA men’s and women’s track teams will play hosts for the Pac-10 championships on May 21-22 at Drake Stadium.

The first event on May 21 will be at 1 p.m. and the last at 6:30. On May 22, the first event will be at 1 p.m. and the last at 3:55. The hammer throw will be at 10 a.m. May 21 at Cal State Los Angeles.