The women’s tennis teamp needs more space.
“We don’t have room for it in our trophy case,” head coach Lele Forood says about the hefty championship award her team brought home in May, when it won the NCAA team title. For the fourth time in five years.
Until the downstairs trophy case can be expanded, the new hardware will reside in the upstairs lounge of the tennis complex—a reminder of another perfect season (27-0). The Cardinal beat 11th-seeded Texas 4-0 at the University of Georgia to earn its 14th NCAA title.
Co-captains Alice Barnes, who was named most outstanding player of the tournament, and Erin Burdette brought home trophies of their own, as winners of the NCAA doubles championship. Gabriela Lastra and Lauren Kalvaria captured the doubles title as seniors in 2002 for the Cardinal, but you have to go back to 1990 to find the kind of all-Stanford scenario Barnes, ’06, and Burdette, ’05, faced in the finals on May 28: they looked across the net and saw teammates and fellow All-Americans Amber Liu, ’06, and Anne Yelsey, ’07.
“They’d won a team championship together five days before, and it was very hard going into the match,” says Forood, ’78. “It was a big title on the line, and they all wanted to win desperately.”
The moment the match-up became clear, Forood says, she “stopped talking to everybody about everything.” The four players quietly sorted out who would wear what combination of red and white, and when the match finally got underway, there were none of the typical fired-up, encouraging yells between partners. The crowd also was subdued, applauding good points and seemingly not wanting to take sides.
On the court, Burdette says, she and Barnes tried to focus on their game: “We had opponents, but we tried not to think about that part.” When the final point was played and the unseeded duo had won, 6-3, 6-4, Barnes could contain only some of her excitement. “I hugged Erin and wouldn’t let go,” says the effusive native of the United Kingdom. “She’s not very emotional, so I figured this was the only hug I was going to get, and I held on tight.”
Going into the NCAAs, which Forood calls “the tournament that never ends,” the coach didn’t know for sure which players would compete. Liu, the two-time defending NCAA singles champion, and Burdette had been sidelined with shoulder injuries; freshman Whitney Deason had a back problem; and freshman Lejla Hodzic had turned her ankle. “We were pasting it together as we went into and through the regionals, and when we got [to Georgia], we did an inventory,” says Forood, who has a record of 138-3 in five years as head coach. “We decided to put our best team on the court our first day and play that way as long as we held up.”
Once the Cardinal secured the team championship on May 22, the physical toll began to register. Liu and Burdette withdrew from singles competition to prepare for doubles, where they’d have to serve half as often.
After the final showdown against their Stanford teammates, Barnes said she was “thrilled” that Burdette won a national title in her senior year: “She played brilliantly.”
