By James Kim (@Jdkim38):
Weather conditions caused a delay in the scheduled start time of the Bronco Invitational Tennis Tournament at Santa Clara University as the courts were puddled for some time afterwards.
In the last tournament of the fall, the Spartans played with different doubles partners and the new pairs managed to win each game.
“We’re still trying to figure it out ourselves,” said head coach Chad Skorupka about the unique doubles pairings.
On Friday, the pairings were sophomore Jackie Wagner and freshman Laura Malsert, junior Miyo Kobayashi and senior Sybille Gauvain and sophomore Clara Mantaux and freshman Savannah Sendar. Freshman Julie Vereecke was paired with Taylor Lallas from Stanford University in a game against the host teams’ pairing of Caitlyn Frankel and Nadine Del Carmen.
The singles rounds began with four individual players competing against players from Stanford.
Mantaux defeated Lallas while Gauvain and Malsert were defeated in their first round games. Wagner won in her match opposite Stanford’s Nami Rosenberg.
The remainder of three matches were delayed by more precipitation later in the day, and then light showers for most of the daylight hours of Saturday.
Sunday would begin with another set of doubles rounds followed by singles matches. Stanford would not compete in the day’s tennis games while the University of San Francisco joined the competition against the remaining SCU and SJSU teams.
Mantaux and Gauvain as a team, was one of two, along with Malsert and Sendar to win in the doubles round on Sunday. The rest of the Spartans doubles pairings lost on the final day of competition.
Mantaux and Kobayashi won in singles games against USF’s Sarina Chihabra and SCUs Nadine Del Carmen.
With Stanford away from tournament, USF athletes formed a new form of tournament in which SJSU and SCU played most of the games.
“It was just one of those days when we were missing a lot of shots, communication was off,” Skorupka said.
The Spartans’ next tennis match will be on Jan. 26, against Sonoma State University at the new SJSU tennis complex.
