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| I came to UCLA as a grad student in Fall 2001, and found that the campus had two weekend intramural tournaments for tennis, and that was all. I approached Val Castro at UCLA Recreation, and by Fall '02 I was running an IM Tennis League. Enrollment in Fall '02 was about 30 people. Anthony came on as an administrator in Spring '03, and under our direction the league has grown to 200+ participants (Fall '06).
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| In Fall '03, Julie Oshiro-Kenton (the USTA SoCal Tennis on Campus representative at the the time) approached me with the idea to make the IM League a ToC-sponsored program. With that came the first 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 our League. UCLA won the '03 SoCal championships, and repeated as champs in Winter '05, '06 and '07. As a result, the team earned automatic berths in each of the last four NIRSA national ToC championships, where we finished 4th in both '04 and '05, and lost in the quarterfinals in '07 to eventual champs Texas A&M. See below for details on the early years.
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| 2003-2004:
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| The UCLA Intramural Tennis Team finished fourth in the nation at the USA team tennis championships in Daytona Beach, Florida.
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| 2004-2005:
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| UCLA's Intramural Tennis Team swept the Southern California Campus Championships in Malibu, winning both automatic qualifying spots for the National Championships, to be held in San Diego in March. During Saturday's pool play, UCLA's "Blue" team defeated UCSB, Biola and USC "Cardinal", while UCLA's "Gold" team knocked off tournament host Pepperdine, USC "Gold", Claremont Mudd, and UCSD. On Sunday, UCLA Gold defeated USC Cardinal, and UCLA Blue beat UCSD, leaving UCLA to play itself in the finals, and automatically qualifying the Bruins to bring two teams for nationals! Officially, Team Blue earned the bigger trophy, thanks to the heroics of mixed doubles team Agustin Zarzosa and Christina Seifert.
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| At the 2005 USA Team Tennis National Championships, the UCLA Intramural/Club Tennis Teams "Blue" and "Gold" finished 4th and 6th, respectively!
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| 2005-2006:
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| Congratulations to the UCLA IM/Club Tennis Team, 2006 Southern California Campus Champions! UCLA's Gold team captured the title, beating USC's Gold team 20-18 in the finals. UCLA's Blue team scored a dramatic comeback to hold off USC's Cardinal team for third place, in the 10-team tournament.
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| UCLA enjoyed a dominant run to another quarterfinal berth at the 2006 national championships, before a technicality disqualified them from the tournament, as reported here.
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| 2006-2007
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| Featuring the debut of Club Tennis' freshmen powerhouse, including players Spencer Cohen, Ricky Wu, Chikako Shimura, Alyssa Chen, and Emily Wu, UCLA took Regionals by storm with decisive victories over all their competitors. UCLA took home the Championships for the 4th time in a row.
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| UCLA loses to eventual champion Texas A&M in the quarterfinals of Nationals.
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| 2007-2008
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| The freshmen quintuplets, now sophomores, continue to dominate play. UCLA wins its 5th consectuive Regionals title.
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| UCSD eliminates USC in the Regionals quarterfinals. UCLA barely scrapes by UCSD in an epic semifinals supertiebreaker, after being down going into mixed doubles. UCLA defeats UCI in the finals.
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| At Nationals, minus the freshmen Wu's, UCLA places 13th in the nation. UCLA again loses to previous champion Texas A&M.
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| 2008-2009
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| UCLA Blue lost to USC in the Regional finals, with UCLA Gold placing fourth after forfeiting their 3rd place match to support the Blue team.
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| At Nationals in Surprize, Arizona, the freshmen quintuplets (now juniors) reunite. UCLA finished 29th after a spectacular run from universities nationwide. Collegiate Club tennis' exponential growth over a year that devastated NCAA programs nationwide displayed the persisting strength of the sport. It has also heightened the level of play as increasingly more talented players are attracted to Club Tennis.
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