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SHARING THE NEWS: Liu defeated
Castellvi in straight sets.
NCAA
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as the top junior
player in the country, Amber Liu earned a wild-card trip
to the U.S. Open in 2001. In August she’ll return to
Flushing, N.Y., after winning this year’s NCAA women’s
singles championship as a Stanford freshman.
“You’re in the locker room with all the pros you
see on TV,” Liu says. “You see their routine, how
they get ready for their matches with massages, and there
are drinks
for everyone, and it’s just a really neat experience.”
Liu
has the enthusiasm of, well, a freshman. She was named
both 2003 Intercollegiate Tennis Association Rookie
of the
Year and Pac-10 Freshman of the Year. She picked up
the ITA crown at the NCAA finals in May, upsetting Tennessee’s
top-seeded Vilmarie Castellvi 7-6 (5), 6-2. “It was
overwhelming,” Liu
says about her win, which came after the top-ranked,
defending champion Cardinal (25-2) lost the team championship
to host
school Florida, 4-3, playing in front of 1,200 Gators
fans.
ITA honors also went to head coach Lele Forood,
named National Coach of the Year, and to Frankie Brennan,
Assistant Coach
of the Year. “It was very nice, but also ironic to
get Coach of the Year the year you lose,” says Forood, ’78,
who has led the Cardinal to two NCAA team titles in
her three years at the helm. “I’m going to
assume our coaching staff was honored because [the
ITA] thought it was a pretty
good feat with such a young team.”
Liu was one of
four freshmen on a team with no seniors. She quickly
stepped into the No. 1 singles spot and “picked
up a lot of tricks” in the process, says Forood. “She’s
very tenacious and plays a great mental game, and the
areas we’re going to work on next are getting her
stronger and more physically imposing.”
For Liu,
it was a long introductory season to college play. “There
are so many matches that you have to learn to bounce
back and be ready to come out and play again,” she
says. “But
I’m a pretty motivated tennis girl and I work pretty
hard, and I love it so much. It’s my passion.”
Spoken
like a champ.
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