UCLA Women Take First, Georgia Men Repeat

Story & Photos by Marcia Frost

TULSA, Okla.—It may have been a wild road there, but in the end the winners were not big surprises at the 2008 NCAA Division I Team Championship as the UCLA Bruin women took their first team tennis title and the Georgia Bulldogs men repeated.

The women's draw was full of shockers as top-seeded Northwestern, usual semifinalist Stanford and defending champions Georgia Tech were all knocked out before their time.  Left standing was the University of California, in their inagural NCAA Championship final, led by first year coach Amanda Augustus.  Her opponent was far from a stranger to this arena, though. Stella Sampras Webster had been to the team finals five times before.  This time, however, she was returning her entire team from last year -- the team that had made it to second place.

Coach Augustus called it "the longest 4-0 match every played" and it looked that way between the No. 7 Bruins and No. 8 Bears.  There were some great doubles on all courts as the teams split the second and third before Alex McGoodwin & Yasmin Schnack defeated Bojana Bobusic & Cristina Visico, 8-6, to give their team the doubles. From there it was a split of first sets in singles, and then the second point from UCLA's Alex McGoodwin. It took a little while for Andrea Remynse to finish off Claire Ilcinkas, as the match included a tough tiebreaker in the first and, just as she was going to close it out at 5-0 in the second, a medical timeout for an ear problem, but Andrea did get it together and finished it at 6-2.

Despite a 3-0 lead, it wasn't so simple for UCLA to close it. Their remaining courts were in third sets, with the exception of the battle between Tracy Lin vs. Marina Cossou.   It was in the No. 1 position where Riza Zalameda sealed it with a win over Susie Babos and earned her tournament MVP status.

Last year, John Isner led the University of Georgia men to an incredible season and an NCAA team trophy.  This year, the road was a bit bumpier, and it was the University of Virginia who
held the undefeated season and were the favorites coming in.  They were followed by Ohio State University, whose only loss of the year was to the Cavaliers.  But, after just squeaking by the University of Illinois in a tiebreaker on the last set, the Buckeyes fell to the University of Texas and then Georgia got its revenge on Virginia in the semis.  Texas continued to surprise with a defeat of the 2004 champion UCLA men, and it was not the final everyone expected.

It all started with a match of champions. Georgia's Nate Schnugg & Jamie Hunt have been playing together a long time, winning the U.S. Open Junior Doubles Championships before teaming in college. However, Nate Schnugg won a Junior Wimbledon doubles crown, as well as a trophy at the Nationals at Kalamazoo with Kellen Damico. On Tuesday, Nate had to face former partner Kellen in doubles and singles.

It was Texas' Kellen who had the lead with partner Ed Corrie up to 4-1, when Nate & Jamie came back into it and the crowd was treated to (literally) Grand Slam quality doubles. That match was actually left at 8-7 for the Bulldogs, though, because Texas claimed the bottom two. In singles, tournament MVP Nate Schnugg did claim the victory over his cramping friend, whom he hugged at the net.

Before Nate Schnugg took the first Georgia win, Texas was actually ahead 2-0. The Bulldogs then won four in a row. In a major twist of irony, the Georgia trophy was clinched by former Texas Longhorn Travis Helgeson, who had transferred to the Bulldogs after his first year, when he was able to muster up enough energy to beat Dimitar Kurtovsky, 4-6,6-2,6-3.

There is nothing like college tennis to bring out the loud, wild and crazy fans and it's not over yet.  The individual competition begins on Wednesday at the University of Tulsa on Wednesday with 64 singles draws and 32 doubles as the best in college tennis will continue to go at it.  

Marcia Frost can be reached at Marcia@CollegeAndJuniorTennis.com