Cal Poly senior tennis player Carol Erickson was hardly afraid to take on the defending NCAA singles champion last Saturday.
In fact, Erickson took third-ranked Cal junior Susie Babos to three games at the Cal Winter Invitational. Babos wound up a 6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-3 winner, but Erickson feels that making each set competitive in the two-and-a-half-hour match bodes well for the rest of the season.
“I think it proves that Cal Poly women’s tennis can compete with the best of them,” Erickson said Monday at a weekly press conference. “Being able to do that against (Babos) is really great and helped me a lot.”
Erickson and the Mustangs will continue their difficult schedule when they visit USC – ranked third in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association poll – at 1:30 p.m. Friday and No. 14 Pepperdine at 11 a.m. Saturday. Cal Poly’s road trip also includes No. 15 UCLA (Tuesday), Northern Arizona (Jan. 27) and No. 23 Arizona State (Jan. 28).
“It’s such an opportunity,” Erickson said of the Mustangs’ schedule. “Playing the best is only going to make us better. When we go out and play our (Big West) conference tournament in April, we’ve already looked at everything.”
Erickson gave high praise to freshman Brittany Blalock, who was 12-2 and won the first collegiate tournament she ever played in (the Fullerton Invitational) during the fall season.
“I look up to her in so many ways,” Erickson said of Blalock. “She’s motivating, not only to me, but to her teammates. She’s a great role model to all of us. I feel so blessed to have such a wonderful team with me.”
Asked whether she has a leadership role on the team, Erickson said, “I feel like I learn from them just as much as they learn from me.”
Potential singles matchups over the weekend include Erickson against Pepperdine’s 22nd-ranked Bianca Dulgheru and UCLA’s 28th-ranked Yasmin Schnack as well as Blalock against UCLA’s 35th-ranked Riza Zalameda.
In doubles, Erickson and freshman Steffi Wong – who lost only 8-4 over the weekend to the Cal’s second-ranked tandem of Babos and Zsuzsanna Fodor – could face even stiffer competition. Erickson and Wong will likely play against UCLA’s 17th-ranked tandem of Zalameda and Schnack and Pepperdine’s 21st-ranked Dulgheru and Sylvia Kosakowski.