Santa Clara, Calif. - The Santa Clara women's tennis team battled hard through the rain delays at Stanford this weekend to come away with some impressive victories at the ITA Northwestern Regional Tournament. Head Coach Ben Cabell commented on his team's play, "Our top players went deep into this draw, and only lost to some of the best players in the country."

Cabell indeed had grounds to extol his players for their efforts against tough Pac-10 and WCC opponents. Freshman Katie Le defeated Oregon's Julia Metzger 6-1;6-1 and USF's Yurie Hashiguchi 6-3;6-0, while sophomore Kelly Lamble beat Stanford's Jennifer Yen 1-6; 6-3; 6-3 before losing in a hard fought semifinals match to Cal Poly's Jennifer Cornea 4-6; 7-5; 6-2.

In addition, all three doubles teams won their first round of matches, defeating teams from conference rival USF and a solid team from Cal Poly.

The team's sole senior, Carmen Pham, drew praise from Cabell as well, "She has been playing well with doubles and had some tuff draws in singles, but she's been showing some great leadership in her play with Jessica, and we're really happy with how it's going so far." The combination of youthful talent and time tested experience should serve the Broncos well as they enter into a promising season.

With just one fall pre-season tournament remaining, Cabell hopes the team can take the next few weeks to, "work on some things we learned from these three tournaments, and really try to put ourselves in a good place finishing up the fall season down at Cal Poly." The Broncos will travel to San Luis Obispo to compete in Cal Poly's Hidden Duel November 19-21^st.  

For all final results of the ITA Tournament click: here

Go Broncos!

By: Kelsey Houlihan '11