Crossed racquets? Or a single racquet and ball? The decision was tougher than a line call at match point.
A week after they stormed through the NCAA tournament in Stone Mountain, Ga., to bring home Stanford's 11th national title, the women's tennis players were having trouble picking out a championship ring. They huddled around a table in the coach's office and compared dozens of designs, trashing the tackiest settings. Finally, they settled on a red stone and Block "S" with characteristic team style: lots of laughter.
"It's been a fabulous year," first-year head coach Lele Forood, '78, says about the 30-0 season. "By playing all those successful matches during the school year, they had built up a lot of confidence in themselves and in each other. And by the time they got to the tournament, that confidence transcended everything."
In the men's ncaa tournament, Cardinal hopes for back-to-back championships were shattered when 2000 singles champion Alex Kim, '01, was hospitalized with dehydration. Second-seeded Stanford lost to No. 6 Tennessee 4-2 in the quarterfinals.
The top-seeded Cardinal women, however, shut out Vanderbilt 4-0 in the team finals, and sophomore Laura Granville won the singles championship for the second year in a row. The victory helped Granville, the nation's No. 1 collegiate player, make the decision to turn pro this summer.
"I've been thinking about it a lot this past year, and it's really been a tough choice," Granville says. "I love going to school here so much--plus the team and the social aspects--and I knew I'd have to leave those things. But winning the tournament made it clear that it was the right choice."
In the singles finals, Granville beat junior Lauren Kalvaria 7-6, 6-3--the second year in a row she has faced a teammate in that match. "It was so difficult," Granville says. "We just tried to put our friendship aside when we got on the court and just played ball. And it was really nice when we got off the court because it was the same old feeling. We were still friends."
It's the kind of mutual support that has carried the team through the season. On the mornings of the semifinal and final matches, the players gathered in a hotel room to talk about what the tournament meant to them. "Coming out of those meetings," Granville says, "we knew we were ready to go."
