Doubles Is a Pleasure for Pepperdine Pair

Ipek Senoglu has had a solid career as the top singles player for the Pepperdine women’s tennis team. She is talented enough to be ranked in the top 20 on the collegiate level.

When she teams up with Paola Palencia, they are something special. As arguably the nation’s top doubles team, the duo became the first to reach the first three championship matches of the Intercollegiate Tennis Assn. grand slam.

The slam consists of the National Clay Court Championships, Riviera Women’s All-American Championships, National Intercollegiate Indoor Championships and NCAA Championships.

Other teams regularly change their doubles pairings for each tournament, but Senoglu and Palencia have stayed together and played in all three.

But being the nation’s most consistent and successful team isn’t entirely satisfying for Senoglu and Palencia. They have lost in each title chance and have only the NCAA finals in May left.

“People say you learn from losing but I don’t know about that,” Senoglu said. “We’re getting better each day. It’s great that we keep getting to the finals but I’m not satisfied with that.

“I want us to win the NCAAs so we can get [a draw] into the U.S. Open. That would be my dream.”

Senoglu and Palencia have forged a 21-5 record with unique talents. Senoglu, a senior from Turkey, is a baseline player who was once considered her nation’s top player. Palencia, a junior from Cordoba, Mexico, relies on her serve-and-volley game to succeed.

The key to the partnership is each recognizing and complementing the other’s abilities.

“I know her strengths and weaknesses and she knows mine,” Palencia said. “She gives me a lot of confidence. It’s worked really well.”

They can be comforted with their result last weekend. In Pepperdine’s 6-1 loss to top-ranked Stanford, Senoglu and Palencia recorded the Waves’ only victory, defeating Lauren Kalvaria and Lauren Barnikow, 8-5.

That was notable in that Kalvaria and Barnikow had grabbed the No. 1 doubles ranking and that the fourth-ranked Senoglu and Palencia had ended the Stanford jinx.

Kalvaria teamed with Gabriela Lastra to defeat the Pepperdine pair at Riviera last October. Senoglu and Palencia also lost to the Stanford team of Lastra and Laura Granville at the National Indoors in February.

“It was really good for us,” Palencia said of Saturday’s victory. “They’re the No. 1 team. We had to keep our focus and concentration throughout the match. They were playing well but we played really good.”

The losses are setbacks Senoglu takes personally for a day or two, then are relegated to the back of her mind.

Senoglu has some perspective about real loss. While staying in her native Istanbul during the summer of 1999, a disastrous 7.4 earthquake hit the region.

The Aug. 17 temblor killed more than 17,000. Senoglu was fortunate but she saw thousands who weren’t.

“It happened about a week before I came back to school,” she said. “We were outside, living in a tent.

“I remember seeing a 4-year-old girl who was trapped under a building. You could only see her arm and her mother was holding her hand the whole time. They couldn’t get her out because if they moved the bricks, the others might have fallen.

“They couldn’t do anything. She just died.”

Senoglu hasn’t had an easy road at Pepperdine. Months after surviving the earthquake, she was hospitalized because of injuries she suffered in a serious auto accident. She has also fought through back and foot injuries.

But she doesn’t bemoan her experiences. Instead, Senoglu wonders how others can complain about the smallest of things.

“Everybody around here is so worried about everything,” she said. “When you see things I’ve seen, you feel how little you are as a person.”

*

The second-ranked UCLA men’s volleyball team ended USC’s winning streak at six Wednesday in a Mountain Pacific Sports Federation match, stopping the seventh-ranked Trojans, 34-32, 33-31, 39-17.

UCLA will host No. 4 Stanford in the 24th annual Kilgour Cup tonight at Pauley Pavilion. Proceeds will be donated to Hall of Fame player Kirk Kilgour, who was left a paraplegic after a training accident in the mid-1970s.

*

UCLA softball Coach Sue Enquist won her 600th game on Feb. 26 as the Bruins won the Texas Invitational with a 3-1 victory over Southwest Texas State at Austin. The top-ranked Bruins, who are 28-0, went 6-0 in the tournament. . . . Pepperdine stunned previously undefeated and ninth-ranked Texas, 4-3, in a men’s tennis match last weekend at Malibu. Sebastien Graeff and Stefan Suter’s 9-7 doubles victory over the Longhorns’ Jorge Hari and Jose Zarhi clinched the victory.

*

Marcin Matkowski and Travis Rettenmaier of UCLA defeated USC’s Ryan Moore and Nick Rainey, 6-4, 2-6, 6-4, to win the Pacific Coast Men’s Doubles Tournament at La Jolla Beach Tennis Club. . . . Jewel Peterson and Maureen Diaz helped USC win four of six singles matches in the Trojans’ 5-2 victory over UCLA last weekend at the L.A. Tennis Center.

COLLEGE DIVISION

Despite making 12 three-pointers, one off the NCAA Division III women’s basketball tournament record, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (19-7) lost to St. Thomas University of Minnesota, 69-59, in the first round last week.

Senior Aubrey Edgmon closed out her Claremont career with a 27-point, 10-rebound performance that included seven three-pointers. Senior Felicia Davis added 16 points to finish as the Athenas’ No. 3 all-time scorer with 1,602 points.

Azusa Pacific captured the Golden State Athletic Conference men’s and women’s tournaments Tuesday night at Whittier College, earning automatic bids to next week’s National Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics tournament.

Anthony Haggins scored 22 points off the bench and Justin Leslie added 19 to lead Azusa (33-2) past Biola, 75-68, in the final. The Cougar women (24-6) defeated Westmont, 74-59, behind 27 points by junior forward Stephanie Patten.