Sophomore Kana Moriyama (Redmond, Wash. \/ Redmond) became the first Beaver, male or female, to reach a finals match in tournament competition, finishing as the runner-up in the back draw of the ITA West Regional Championships and leading Caltech women\u2019s tennis to a record team performance this past weekend.<\/p>\n
Moriyama and classmate Julia Reisler (Plano, Texas \/ Greenhill) both lasted all three days in the tournament, with Reisler making her second consecutive run to the semifinals, this time in the second consolation bracket after recording a first-round victory on Friday. As a team, the Beavers nearly double their previous record for combined wins at a tournament, recording 11 victories against 10 losses, in addition to a pair of walkovers due to injury. All five Beavers who competed won at least one match, with three of the five succumbing only to seeded opponents throughout the entire competition.<\/p>\n
Reisler and freshmen Angelica Zhou (Temple City, Calif. \/ Arcadia) and Alexandra Bodrova (Russia \/ Kurchatovskaya School) all won their first match to advance to the second round of the main draw, where all three fell to #9 seeds. Reisler put up the best fight, going down 6-2, 6-3, and then going on to pull out a superbreaker in the first round of the second consolation bracket. She picked up a 6-3, 6-2 win over three-star Pomona-Pitzer Colleges freshman Jay Kim before ultimately falling in a thriller to the Sagehens\u2019 Joy Kim, the #3 seed in the field and last year\u2019s No. 35-ranked player in the country (6-3, 7-5). Reisler fought back from the first-set defeat to hold three set points, but Kim dug in and went on to win the finals match in a superbreaker an hour later.<\/p>\n
Moriyama was just three points from a potential run through the main bracket despite drawing the toughest first-round matchup of any Beaver, squaring off with #9 seed Arianna Chen (P-P). The sophomore dropped the first set but forced a tiebreak in the second before going down, 7-6 (4). She went on to record a 7-5, 7-5 win in the first round of the back draw before steamrolling her next two opponents by identical 6-2, 6-0 scores on Saturday, then began Sunday with a dominant 6-1, 6-0 victory in the semifinals to reach the finals match. Although she would fall in the finale, her six matches played mark the most a Beaver has ever competed in at a tournament, while Reisler\u2019s five tied her own record set last year. The pair also notched a victory in doubles, defeating Chapman University duo Nicole Fouts and Raven Hampton, 8-3, before bowing out against the #4 seed CMS team.<\/p>\n
Bodrova and Zhou both impressed in their first collegiate competition, with the former claiming a tight 7-6 (2), 7-5 win in the first round, then falling to a #9 seed and withdrawing due to injury in the second consolation bracket. Zhou did not drop a single set in her first collegiate match but ran into a strong #9 seed in CMS\u2019s Jessie Cruz in the second round and ended her tournament with a solid 6-2, 6-1 defeat to #3 Kim in the second consolation bracket. Senior Sophia Chen (Newport Beach, Calif. \/ Corona Del Mar) also competed in the tournament, dropping her first match but recording a 6-3, 6-1 win in the back draw before falling 6-3, 6-1 in the second round.<\/p>\n
Head Coach Mandy Gamble and the Beavers open the 2017 season at Linfield College on Jan. 28.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sophomore Kana Moriyama (Redmond, Wash. \/ Redmond) became the first Beaver, male or female, to reach a finals match in tournament competition, finishing as the runner-up in the back draw of the ITA West Regional Championships and leading Caltech women\u2019s tennis to a record team performance this past weekend. Moriyama and classmate Julia Reisler (Plano, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4207,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-girlstennis","category-topstories"],"yoast_head":"\n