Although the Oregon women’s tennis team was stuck in limbo, sitting on the bubble to make the NCAA tournament, three of its athletes are forced to turn their attention to the individual Pacific-10 Conference championships.
Celine Rolly, Anna Powaska and Carmen Seremeta are set to compete in the four-day, individual Pac-10 championships beginning Thursday in Ojai, Calif. The Oregon girls are considered underdogs in a tournament that features the best tennis players in the nation, but all three have high hopes of extending March’s madness into late April.
The top three tennis players from each university automatically qualify to the Pac-10 tournament, creating 27 automatic bids. Then, five at-large bids are given to the next five highest ranked athletes, setting up a 32-person field. Separate from the Pac-10 tournament is a national invitational, which is held in mid-May and determines the overall NCAA individual champion.
Oregon’s best hope for a deep Pac-10 run lies in the No. 77 ranked Rolly, a freshman who has been Oregon’s No. 1 tennis player all spring. For the national tournament, both Rolly and Seremeta find themselves in the same spot as their team when it comes to making the NCAA field – firmly on the bubble.
“Heading into the Pac-10 championship, we’ve got two kids – Rolly and Seremeta – who have very good chances to qualify for the NCAA championship if they can pick up a couple more wins,” Oregon women’s coach Paul Reber said.
As a team, the Ducks have been relegated to bubble status due to a four-match losing streak to end their Pac-10 season; however, all four opponents – USC, UCLA, California and Stanford – were ranked in the nation’s top 10.
“The way our Pac-10 schedule was set up this year, it was certainly tough,” said Reber. “All four were ranked in the top 10, and we didn’t play as well against USC and UCLA as I would have liked. We had a couple of big wins at home against Cal and Stanford.”
Cal’s roster included 2006 NCAA individual champion Suzi Babos, and although the Ducks lost the match 6-1, they made it an uncomfortable day for the former national champion.
In doubles play, Celine Rolly and Anna Powaska defeated the No. 20-ranked doubles pairing in the country, a team led by Babos. Carmen Seremeta extended the former champion’s woes in singles play, defeating her in the tiebreaker set 10-5 after splitting the first two sets.
The bright spots in a losing effort were fitting for this Oregon team – one that has crawled out from its traditional cellar spot in the Pac-10 standings and into the spotlight as a young team that could become a factor in upcoming seasons.
“To get three wins in the Pac-10 and get the sixth place finish in the Pac-10 is certainly better than last year,” Reber said. “We’re a bubble team right now, and I think we’ll make the tournament. Fingers crossed.”