After passing its first major challenge of the season with a 5-2 victory over No. 4 UCLA, the No. 1 Stanford women’s tennis team now prepares to host No. 28 Southern Methodist University (4-1) Thursday afternoon.
Stanford (4-0) has proved that despite its relative youth, it’s well prepared to take care of highly ranked opponents. Freshman players usually need time to become acclimated to the pressures of playing such a match, but this group appears ready.
“They’re really experienced players already,” said head coach Lele Forood. “They’ve played on international stages and at Grand Slam events. If they’re intimidated by UCLA in February, we’re in trouble.”
The experience Forood mentioned is indeed impressive. Freshman Kristie Ahn has a career-high singles ranking of 304, achieved in June 2009 at the age of 17. She made it to the finals of a $50,000 singles event in Carson, Calif., before losing to fellow American up-and-comer CoCo Vandeweghe. She also faced off against then-No. 7 Dinara Safina in the first round of the 2008 U.S. Open.
Fellow freshman Nicole Gibbs has a career-high singles ranking of 356, achieved in September 2010, and has played mixed doubles in the U.S. Open with fellow American Sam Querrey, ranked 17th in the world on the men’s side. The two have partnered up in several ITF events, including winning a $50,000 Pro Circuit tournament in Raleigh, N.C. over the No. 3 seed duo of Alexandra Mueller and Ahsha Rolle by scores of 6-3, 6-2.
With such promising futures on the professional circuit, the girls chose to attend Stanford for its team dynamics and consistent level of play.
“Having team practice is awesome because there is no other venue I know of where I have 10 girls who play at a really high competitive level, and who I can practice with and feed off of every day,” Gibbs said. “That’s been really helpful.”
“The consistency of competition in college tennis has been beneficial to me also,” she continued. “We play so many matches that I’m really always match ready. When I go to individual tournaments or professional tournaments now, I’m playing really well.”
Still, the pair will lose occasionally, as it did this past weekend. Ahn and Gibbs lost, 8-6, at the No. 2 spot in doubles to UCLA’s Hickey and Jones. The team was able to rally past that, eventually winning the doubles point with victories at the No. 1 and No. 3 spots.
“Kristie and I struggled a little bit in the doubles, but obviously it didn’t have an impact on the overall score,” Gibbs said. “We were pretty quickly able to shake off that loss. I think we both turned around really well and I think we were able to put 110 percent into our singles performance.”
Faced with another tough opponent in SMU Thursday afternoon, the Cardinal will go into the match prepared to fight against a worthy challenger.
“SMU is a good team,” Forood said. “We saw them last year in the NCAA Tourney in the earlier rounds. They have some highly ranked players in the top half of their team so hopefully they’ll be a good challenge for our players.”
As the top-ranked team in the country and defending national champion, the Cardinal knows that teams like SMU approach each matchup with Stanford with increased energy.
“You have to embrace it,” Gibbs said about the target on Stanford’s back. “It’s something that just confirms the fact that we’re a really, really solid team. At the same time, it makes us work that much harder knowing everyone else is in practice thinking about how they’re going to beat Stanford in the next team competition.”
Stanford women’s tennis will continue its march through the season this afternoon against SMU at 1:30 p.m.