SARAH IRVIN
Staff Writer
Doubles play was delayed by the rain and the ITA Regionals had a change of location, but that didn’t stop senior doubles partners Pedro Rico and Ivor Lovrak from capturing a tournament win.
Half way through the Pepperdine-hosted tournament, the rain and court conditions forced the 10 teams to change locations to the Los Angeles Tennis Center, home to the UCLA Bruins. The tournament featured top-seeded players from schools all over Southern California. These teams included UCLA, University of Southern California, UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara, Arizona, Arizona State, Loyola Marymount University, University of San Diego, San Diego State University and Pepperdine.
While the tournament started Thursday, the real excitement happened over the weekend. After moving the tournament to UCLA, newly-paired doubles partners Lovrak and Rico rallied to beat the top-ranked Bruins team of Ben Kohlloeffel and Philipp Gruendler, 9-7. Later that day, the No.-3 seeded Waves were up against the No.-4 Mathieu Dehaine and Aaron Yovan of UCLA. It was a close match, but the Waves prevailed to take home the doubles championship with a game score 8-6.
“It was a great tournament for Lovrak and Rico. They’ve never played together, and we stuck them together and they had a great win in the semifinals,” Head Coach Adam Steinberg said.
This win gives the pair a wild card bid to the National Indoor Championships at Ohio State University in early November.
“This is the first time that (Lovrak) is going to get to go to the championships, and for him as a senior, it was terrific,” Steinberg said.
On the singles side, Lovrak, Rico and Richard Johnson easily advanced to the second round after beating players from UCI, LMU and UCSB. This wasn’t the case for Pepperdine’s fourth representative, senior Kevin Borzenski, who fell to Arizona’s Jason Labrosse 6-2, 6-2 in the first round.
“Kevin came through with some big wins in the back draw which he needed,” Steinberg said. “He’s been pretty disappointed with his (season) so far but I thought he played really well.”
Later in the day, the 32 men dwindled to 16. All three Pepperdine players advanced into the third round. Rico struggled at first but came back to beat Jeremy Drean of UCLA 7-5, 6-3. Johnson advanced after a 6-3, 6-4 defeat of San Diego’s Oscar Plotnik and teammate Lovrak triumphed over Matt Ozurovich of the same school 6-0, 6-3.
With a new day of play on Friday, one Wave had a change of luck. Lovrak took the match to three sets but couldn’t hold on as he fell to No.-1 seed Kohlloeffel of UCLA 6-2, 2-6, 6-2. Waves Johnson and Rico knocked two players from Arizona out of the tournament on this second day of play to advance to the next round.
With just eight players left in the quarterfinals, only half of the Pepperdine players survived. Arizona’s Roger Matalonga sought revenge for his two fallen teammates as he sent Johnson home with a 6-3, 6-0 defeat. Moving to the semifinals Matalonga went on to play Rico, who beat San Diego State’s Robert Sabo in the quarterfinals. This time it was Arizona that came out on top as Rico fell to the wildcat 6-3, 6-1.
While the rest of the team is looking forward to performing well in the Southern California Intercollegiate Championships from November 3-5, Lovrak and Rico have their sights set on a different tournament. The National Indoor Championships will be at Ohio State University from Thursday, Nov. 3, to Sunday, Nov. 6 and will feature the best college players from all over the country including two of Pepperdine’s own.
10-31-2005
