The regular season is starting to wind down but for the nation’s No. 1 Stanford women’s tennis team, but that doesn’t mean the competition gets any easier. This weekend the Cardinal faces No. 71 Fresno State before taking on a tough Washington team, currently No. 23 in the nation.
“We’ve been playing very well in that February period, but it’s always a little tricky around winter quarter finals,” said Stanford head coach Lele Forood. “[The players] can’t practice and people are busy with work. We’re not really firing on all cylinders when we start playing again over spring break, but what helps is that we’re a resilient group. We’re starting to look like who we were back in February.”
Fresno State is coming off a tough 4-3 loss to No. 23 Pepperdine and got a surprise upset win in doubles, but eventually lost four matches in singles to lose the day. The team’s top singles player is freshman Marianna Jodoin, ranked 79th in the nation.
“They’re always an interesting match up,” Forood said. “We haven’t played them for a couple years. They usually have a different collection of players. They’ve been very strong in doubles in the past.”
With Stanford’s depth in singles, which includes players like No. 4 Hilary Barte, No. 12 Nicole Gibbs, No. 17 Kristie Ahn, No. 22 Mallory Burdette and No. 55 Stacey Tan, the Cardinal promises to put up quite a fight for the visitors. Stanford also has the No. 2 ranked doubles team in Barte and Burdette and the 30th ranked team in Ahn and fellow freshman Nicole Gibbs.
Washington will provide a bigger challenge for the Cardinal. The Huskies have two players that have dominated singles play so far this year. No. 5 Denise Dy and No. 23 Venise Chan have each only lost once in dual singles play all year, amassing a combined record of 17-1 between the two of them. The two combine to be the 10th-ranked doubles team in the country, promising a tough match for Barte and Burdette.
“They’ve always had outstanding talent at the top of their lineup,” Forood said. “That’s a signature of theirs going back as far as I can remember. The last couple years, they’ve had the depth to be able to play with the top teams. This year they’re as good at the top but maybe not quite as deep.”
Dy has proved to be a powerful contender for this Stanford squad. Twice last year, Dy defeated Barte in tournament play—as well as once in a dual match—and won out over Gibbs back in fall at the National Indoors Championships. Last year’s matchup in Seattle was a close call for the Cardinal, as it barely eked out a 4-3 win in one of Washington’s best matches of the year.
“For me, [losing] factors more into practice,” Barte said. “More incentive, more motivation to work harder and work on certain things so that in the match, when I play that girl again, I’m more prepared and more solid for her. During the actual competition, I’m not really thinking about that stuff.”
“It’s always a tough match,” Forood said. “They know each other really well. They have been playing with and against each other their whole career. They’re extremely familiar with each other. I think Hilary is going to do outstanding on Saturday and I look for her to win that match.”
Despite the increasingly tough competition, the Huskies have failed to muster a win against Stanford in 21 meetings. Washington’s highest ranking this season was No. 15. Stanford, meanwhile, has remained undefeated throughout the year. The team dropped to No. 2 for a short period due to some technicalities in how rankings are decided, but has since returned to its spot atop the nation.
“The team is really excited,” Barte said. “Today in practice we said there were 43 days until NCAAs, 17 team practices left, so now that we see the light at the end of the tunnel, we’re going to kick it into higher gear.”
The team plays today at 1:30 p.m. at Taube Tennis Stadium and on Saturday at 12:00 p.m.