The Waves duo of junior Savannah Broadus and senior Janice Tjen won their match
The Pepperdine Waves women’s tennis team’s season ended in the semifinals of the NCAA Championships at the Greenwood Family Tennis Center in Stillwater, Oklahoma, on May 18. However, members of the squad took to the court at the same locale in the NCAA Singles and Doubles tournaments earlier this week.
The sixth-seeded Waves were beaten 4-0 by the Georgia Bulldogs, seeded seventh, in the match before the championship game. Pepperdine downed Michigan, seeded third, 4-1, the day before.
The Bulldogs won the doubles point with victories on courts two and three over the Pepperdine tandems of senior Nikki Redelijk and freshman Vivian Yang and graduate students Anna Campana and Lisa Zaar. The Waves duo of junior Savannah Broadus and senior Janice Tjen won their match.
Georgia won the first four sets in singles play. Zaar and Redelijk were the only Waves that won their first sets. Yang and Tjen did force their matchups to third sets before being defeated. Broadus and Campana were also downed in singles.
Pepperdine was dominant in their win over Michigan. Broadus and Tjen won their doubles match 6-2 and Redelijk and Yang won their matchup 6-3 to give their squad the doubles point.
Tjen won her singles matchup 6-2, 7-5; Broadus won her contest 6-4. 6-2; and Yang was a 6-2, 6-3 victor.
The Waves have qualified for the NCAA tournament semifinals twice since 2021. The team ended this season with a 21-7 record.
Broadus, the West Coast Conference Player of the Year and an All-American, began play in the NCAA Singles Tournament on Monday with a match against Syracuse’s Miyuka Kimoto.
Zaar, who has qualified for the NCAA Singles Championship three times, faced Andejala Skrobonja of San Diego State on Monday. Zaar is a two-time singles All-American.
Zaar and Broadus are 9-16 seeds in the tournament.
Tjen, earned an at-large bid in the competition. She faced DJ Bennett of Auburn. Tjen has qualified for the tournament three times.
Tjen and Broadus were admitted to the NCAA Doubles Tournament as a number two seed, but they moved up to a top seed after North Carolina’s Reese Brantmeier suffered a season-ending injury, which took her and her partner out of the tournament.
Broadus and Tjen began the event on Tuesday with a match against California’s Hannah Viller Moeller and Mao Mushika. The Waves pair beat the California duo three times this season before the tournament contest.