Despite the San Jose State women’s tennis team’s loss in the first round of the NCAA Championship on Friday, coaches and players expressed excitement about the high potential for success in future seasons.
The Spartans lost to University of California, Berkeley at the Hellman Tennis Complex after they were crowned the Mountain West Conference champions on April 24.
The team finished its 2021 season with a 15-2 overall record and a historic second Mountain West Conference championship.
In 2017, SJSU beat University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the defending Mountain West champions at the time, 4-0 to capture its first-ever championship title.
Head coach Chad Skorupka said he’s looking forward to building upon the success achieved during the 2021 season.
“I told the team, ‘Where do we go from here?,’ ” Skorupka said in a Zoom call. “Yes the future looks good, but there’s work to be done.”
One reason for SJSU’s successful season and its bright future is the freshmen exceeding expectations on the court.
Those freshmen include Irena Muradyan, Raquel Villan Pereira and Jovana Babic, who combined for a 30-7 record in singles matches this season.
“When we came here, we [wanted] to fight for every match,” Muradyan said in a Zoom call. “Our goal was to give 100% effort [in] every match.”
Muradyan finished the season with a 14-1 record in singles matches and was named All Mountain West in singles and the Mountain West Co-Freshman of the Year.
She said she ascribed her first-year success at SJSU to the family culture and sisterhood that surrounds the team.
“At the beginning, I was thinking I [just] need to win my match and that's it,” Muradyan said. “But after [awhile], I thought, ‘No, we need to win [our matches] for the team.’ ”
The freshmen said Skorupka had a big hand in building the family culture as he traveled across Europe before the coronavirus pandemic to recruit and personally meet all of the freshmen.
“He watched my practice and then we walked [around] my country,” Muradyan said. “Then [he flew] to Spain and then Serbia to see [Villan Pereira and Babic].”
The players also said the pandemic actually helped bring the team closer as everyone lived together and leaned on each other for support off the court.
That chemistry was on display when the team lost its first match of the season to University of Nevada, Las Vegas on April 23 in the Fertitta Tennis Complex.
“I mean when we lost [everyone] was sad,” Villan Pereira said in a Zoom call. “But then we thought, ‘OK we lost, but we have another chance tomorrow.’ ”
Pereira said the team was disappointed the perfect season was lost, but everyone uplifted each other to focus on winning the Mountain West Conference championship.
“Although we were so close to having a perfect record, what mattered most was clinching [the] conference,” Skorupka said.
The following day, Babic, one of the freshmen, clinched the conference title in her singles match as SJSU dominated against San Diego State 4-1.
In May of 2017, the Spartans also secured the Mountain West championship in Las Vegas as senior Gael Rey won her match on the same court Babic clinched the 2021 title.
Skorupka said the freshmen had a knack for coming up big when the moment called as SJSU had eight 4-3 wins this season.
“I think that's just a testament to competing and rising on occasion,” Skorupka said. “You look at it and say, ‘Oh wow eight 4-3 matches, they got a little bit lucky.’ I mean if you saw some of our matches this year . . . you know they were battles and [the players] really stepped up when they needed to.”
Skorupka, who won his second-ever Mountain West Conference Coach of the Year honor, said he was pleasantly surprised by the freshmen’s performances this season.
However, he said he’s looking to improve this season’s level of success.
Skorupka said two players are joining the team next year, a junior transfer from Ukraine and a freshman from Spain.
“I think that will just give this team more weapons and more opportunities for combinations in singles lineups [and] doubles,” Skorupka said.
