The Collegian

Issue date: 10/17/06 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Frankie Mangini Caitlin Aloia won the flight C singles draw at the Saint Mary's Invitational.

Last weekend at the 2006 Saint Mary's Women's Tennis Invitational, Saint Mary's players reached the finals in four different flights, but came away with only one championship-junior Caitlin Aloia in the women's flight C singles draw.

The annual invitational, hosted by Saint Mary's at The Korth Tennis Complex, brought 11 other schools to Moraga to compete. Among them were conference rivals Santa Clara University (SCU) and University of San Francisco (USF) and other out-of-conference teams, such as tennis powerhouses Stanford and California.

Giving Saint Mary's one of its most successful runs was the women's B doubles team of junior Stef Ordoveza and sophomore Erin Young, who tore apart SCU's Kim Daniels and Megan Madden in all of 20 minutes, and was dominating Joana Macedo and Sarah Oudomivilay of USF until they retired due to injury after two games.

Having lost only three games so far in the tournament (in their first round win against LMU's Maria Garcia Planas and Vanessa Lunardi), Ordoveza and Young went into the final round with confidence and momentum.

But a victory in the final was not to be. They fought hard but ultimately fell short in Sunday's match against Nevada's Audrey Bardot and Bach-Lan Pham, losing 6-8.

In the women's flight A singles draw, fourth seed Aude Lambert (SMC) fell to Stanford's Lindsay Burdette (7) in the quarterfinals. Lambert struggled to find her rhythm in that match and at one point kicked a ball into the fence- a sign that all was not well in the Saint Mary's camp.

Nonetheless, there were many positives last weekend for Saint Mary's.

The Gaels' resident sibling team, the freshmen Strijbis twins, made their way into the semifinals, beating the fourth seeded team from Nevada 8-3, before losing to the eventual champions, Nina Henkel and Danon Moore from California, 8-5.

Junior Gael Caitlin Aloia came away with the women's C singles championship on Sunday, defeating University of the Pacific's Sasha Fisher 6-1, 6-3.

Next week, the Saint Mary's women's tennis team will be heading over to Berkeley for the ITA Regionals.

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