Davis competed against 18 other schools for Northwest Regional victory
By MEGAN JOSEPH — sports@theaggie.org
Competing in the bay, the UC Davis women’s tennis team drove two hours down to Stanford University for the Intercollegiate Tennis Associations (ITA) regionals. The competition saw schools from all over the west coast come and compete for first place and the title of Northwest Regional Champion.
Prior to regionals, the Davis team has done relatively well throughout their season in local competitions. Regionals being the largest event the team has competed in all season, there was a much harder competition the team had not faced prior.
The competition, consisting of 64 doubles teams and 128 singles, was no easy task for the Aggies. Starting off strong, fourth-year team mebers Carly Schwartzberg and Michelle Zell advanced out of their first round match in doubles. Schwartzberg and Zell passed through the first round with an 8-4 win.
In the next set of matches however, the women put up a tremendous effort, but it wasn’t enough to get them through to the next round. With the next competition being the Saint Mary’s Invitational, the pair are looking to have a rematch with some of the teams they played in regionals.
As seniors, Schwartzberg and Zell have had a lot of success playing together. The duo has only been teamed up together since the 2022-2023 season and it has been nonstop ever since. Last year, Schwartzberg and Zell played a total of 18 matches together where they won 10 out of the 18 matches. The close teammates dominated their conference with a 5-1 record and even had a five consecutive game winning streak making them one of the strongest Davis doubles teams. Together, Schwartzberg and Zell are unstoppable and still have a lot of fight left in them for the rest of the season.
Another Davis doubles team, third-year Daisy Maunupau and fourth-year Olive Maunupau put up a good fight against the 25th-ranked doubles team in the nation from Washington State University, Eva Alvarez and Elyse Tse. The Maunupau duo had an excellent game where they went into a 12-point tiebreaker set. By only slightly losing to such a high-ranked team, the Maunupau duo did very well.
In the singles round of the competition, third-year Ariana Stavropoulos showed her skills on the court and advanced out of the singles first round. She has had a good season so far with her fast reflexes and ability to serve aces against opposing players. Even though she was knocked out in the second singles round of 64, she played expertly against Sacramento State’s very own Mayya Gorbunova and lost by a small margin.
Overall, the Aggies did have the outcome they wanted, but they still put up a very good fight and are looking forward to future competition where they can dominate the courts.
Written by: Megan Joseph — sports@theaggie.org
