THE OJAI

This past week we finished the team portion of our season, but we weren't finished yet as we entered our two sophomores Alyssa and Kate into the historic Ojai Tournament in Southern California.  It is a HUGE tourney with great history in its 111th year!  Ojai was also named USTA tennis town USA as the finals of all draws are played at Libbey Park, a public facility that each year hosts this amazing event.  Draws include the Pac-10 championships, Independent Colleges, DIII men, Junior colleges, juniors, and the CIF high school championships.  There used to be a DIII women's draw but for several years we've competed in the Independent singles with DII and NAIA schools.  You can read about the Ojai and find links to all the draws on their site at http://ojaitourney.org/

Alyssa's mom and cousin came down and so we had a small cheering section as ShoPo breezed through her first round against Cal Lu's Jordan Leckness.  Kate started strong on serve with UCSC's #2 player, senior Taylor Mannix, but at 2-3 was broken and never really recovered with Taylor taking 9 straight games to win 6-0,6-2.  The tennis was close and Kate showed she has all the tools to compete at a very high level and this match and this weekend should really help her in getting her match play to the next level.

Soon after her match, Alyssa went on for her second round against Natalie McNall, the 16 seed and one of the top players at Azusa Pacific University, currently the #6 team in the nation in NAIA.  Natalie is also #31 nationally in her division.  Alyssa came out well but couldn't quite hold serve, then Natalie took it to her for a couple games to go up 2 breaks 4-0.  The 4th game was much better on Natalie's serve, then Alyssa held and was up I believe 15-30, maybe 15-40 when she hit a forehand and then turned her ankle.  In her two years, I have seen her tough out minor injuries, but this was a bad sprain so she retired from singles and we pulled them out of doubles.

Luckily, nothing was broken and despite hobbling around on crutches, not playing doubles and having a fair bit of pain and swelling (sausage toes on the plane home), Alyssa and Kate had a great couple of days taking in the great tennis from the Men's DIII draw where Andrew and Conor competed as well as watching some Pac 10 singles at Libbey Park.  The atmosphere of this tournament is special, the level of play is high and I know that these two will bring back a wealth of excitement and experience as they lead our team as upperclassmen.

For now, its really nice to be back home in Walla Walla, I hope you're all enjoying your Spring out there.

John