I had promised myself (worse, yet,I promised others!) that I was going to make a much stronger effort to track the NCAA championships this year, particularly because All-Around Great Guy Dick Gould (the legendary coach who is now Stanford’s Director of Tennis) was hosting the first-ever combined (men’s and women’s) finale at Stanford’s first-rate facility.
In fact, my friend and junior tennis nut Marcia Frost sent this plea, just a few days ago:
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Dick Gould and the NCAA committee have done an incredible job out here and Stanford is just a beautiful facility. Unfortunately, the press has not flocked here and there are a lot of wonderful matches by some very talented players. (Some of the best will be graduating and hitting the pro tour next month, but you’ll have to wait for my USTA Mag article to hear about that!)
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Anyway, the team tournament came and went this week, and I never got to check in with or shout out to Marcia or my other junior tennis guru, Colette Lewis. Of course, Colette and Marcia did a great job covering the first, team portion of this event at their respective blogs (just click on their names, above) – with picture and all.
It sounds like they had a great tournament in Palo Alto: the Stanford women won (some things never, or rarely, change; this was the Lady Cardinal’s third straight national championship), but the men’s division featured a huge upset: Pepperdine won the championships, upending undefeated and top-seeded Georgia. Despite its' strong tennis tradition, this was Pepperdine's first team national title. Well done!
The singles tournaments begins today; Marcia and Colette will keep rolling out the text at their blogs, so pay them a visit now and then.