In the beginning...
In Fall '02, grad student Mark Otten founded an intramural tennis league, with help from Val Castro at UCLA Recreation. Enrollment that fall was around 30 people. Anthony Horsley came on as an administrator in Spring '03, and under Mark's and Anthony's direction the league grew to 200+ participants by the fall of '06. The latest 2010 UCLA Club Tennis senior class played in the last-ever Otten/Horsley version of the IM tennis league as freshmen in Fall '06, before the league was taken over by the UCLA intramural office, and the current version of UCLA Club Tennis was officially born.
On the competitive team side, in Fall '03 Julie Oshiro-Kenton (the USTA SoCal Tennis on Campus representative at the the time) approached Otten with the idea to make the IM League a ToC-sponsored program. With that came the first-ever SoCal championships in Fall '03 and UCLA's first unofficial "IM Tennis Team", which we formed by taking the best men's and women's finishers from the league. UCLA won the '03 inaugural SoCals, the first of five in a row. The team went on to finish 4th in both '04 and '05 at the NIRSA national championships, its best finish until their narrow semifinal loss to 2010 national champs Cal Berkeley, and subsequent 3rd place finish.
In 2011, UCLA made history by rolling to its first-ever national championship. The Bruins never trailed in the tournament, defeating Penn State, Duke, Central Florida and Florida in gold bracket play en route to the title. The squad was led by freshmen sensations Victoria Wing and Tricia Mar, and sophomore studs JR Sarmiento and Michael Hui.
On the competitive team side, in Fall '03 Julie Oshiro-Kenton (the USTA SoCal Tennis on Campus representative at the the time) approached Otten with the idea to make the IM League a ToC-sponsored program. With that came the first-ever SoCal championships in Fall '03 and UCLA's first unofficial "IM Tennis Team", which we formed by taking the best men's and women's finishers from the league. UCLA won the '03 inaugural SoCals, the first of five in a row. The team went on to finish 4th in both '04 and '05 at the NIRSA national championships, its best finish until their narrow semifinal loss to 2010 national champs Cal Berkeley, and subsequent 3rd place finish.
In 2011, UCLA made history by rolling to its first-ever national championship. The Bruins never trailed in the tournament, defeating Penn State, Duke, Central Florida and Florida in gold bracket play en route to the title. The squad was led by freshmen sensations Victoria Wing and Tricia Mar, and sophomore studs JR Sarmiento and Michael Hui.