May 25, 2004
ATHENS, Ga. – Freshman twins Christian Thompson (Las Vegas, Nev./Bishop Gorman H.S.) and Catrina Thompson (Las Vegas, Nev./Bishop Gorman H.S.), who came to Notre Dame as the #1 18-and-under doubles team in the nation last year, did not disappoint in their debut in the NCAA Division I Women’s Tennis Doubles Championship, rallying to upset the 15th-ranked team in college tennis in three sets Tuesday afternoon at the Dan Magill Tennis Complex. The Thompsons, ranked 36th, lost the first set against Illinois’ pair of Jennifer McGaffigan and Cynthya Goulet, but came back to win 2-6, 6-2, 6-2 after dropping a pair of regular-season matches to the Illini duo.
“I thought they played a little nervous in the first set, but that is understandable since they are freshman playing in the NCAAs for the first time,” said Irish head coach Jay Louderback of his doubles team. “But they settled down and played really well in the next two sets. Catrina served really well in the first game of the second set to go up 1-0, and that was really important in turning it around. They returned a lot better from then on, as well, after missing a lot of returns early. It was great for them to win, especially against a team that had beaten them twice.”
The Irish team, playing a best-of-three-sets format for the first time as collegians after only playing eight-game pro sets previously this season, started slowly, but would then lose just four games over the final two sets to rally for the triumph.
During the regular season, the Illini team beat the Irish twins 8-3 in the quarterfinals of last fall’s ITA Midwest Championships and by an 8-6 score at No. 1 in dual-match action in March. McGaffigan and Goulet finished 28-10 on the season, a campaign that was highlighted by a runner-up result in the regional tournament and a quarterfinal appearance in the Riviera/ITA All-American Championships, the first leg of the collegiate grand slam.
The Thompsons will next play the 26th-ranked team of Megan Muth and Amy Wei of William & Mary in the round of 16 on Wednesday at 1:30 p.m. The Tribe duo rallied for a 2-6, 7-6, 6-2 victory over the top-ranked team in college tennis, Stanford’s Lauren Barnikow and Erin Burdette, in Tuesday’s opening round. The Cardinal team had a 12-match winning streak snapped and finished the season at 32-3.
Muth and Wei stand 29-10, including an 8-2 victory over the Thompsons in dual-match play on April 10 in Williamsburg, Va. The W&M duo has won nine of its last 10 matches. Catrina Thompson faced both Muth and Wei in singles competition during the regular season, upsetting the former, then ranked 39th, in three sets in the Kentucky Fall Classic, but losing in a third-set tiebreaker to Wei at No. 3 in Notre Dame’s 4-3 dual-match defeat last month.
The winner of the Tribe-Irish match will advance to Thursday’s quarterfinals to meet either the 11th-ranked team of Manon Kruse and Carien Venter from Middle Tennessee or the tournament’s No. 7 seed and highest-ranked team still alive, #2 Kelly Schmandt and Aleke Tsoubanos of Vanderbilt. The Thompsons have not played either of those pairs this season.
A win on Wednesday would assure the Irish rookies of All-America honors. Only two previous Notre Dame student-athletes have been named All-Americans as freshmen, both for their singles play. Laura Lee was the Division II national champion at No. 5 singles in 1982, while Jennifer Hall ended her first collegiate campaign ranked ninth nationally in singles in 1996.
The Thompsons are the first all-freshman team to earn an invitation to the NCAA doubles tournament since 1998, when VCU’s Martina Nedelkova and Andrea Ondrisova gained a berth. The Ram team also won its first-round match in three sets, but fell in the round of 16. Prior to this year, just one Notre Dame freshman, Wendy Crabtree in 1993, had participated in the NCAA doubles event since the Irish moved up to Division I in 1985-86.
Tuesday marked the eighth time in 11 Notre Dame appearances in the NCAA Doubles Championship that the Irish won their opening-round match. The Thompsons posted the first win for an Irish doubles team in the NCAAs since current assistant coach Michelle Dasso (’01) and Becky Varnum (’02) downed Old Dominion’s Nataly Cahana and Ana Radelijevic 6-0, 7-5 in the opening round of the 2001 event.
The Thompsons improved to 22-16 on the season and notched their fifth win over a ranked team. It is their third against top-25 teams, having previously beaten #2 Cristelle Grier/Jessica Rush of Northwestern and #22 Melissa Applebaum/Megan Bradley of Miami.
During their junior careers, Christian and Catrina Thompson won national doubles titles on every surface, including the Super National Winter Championship and National Clay Court Championship in 2001 and both the National Grass Court Championship and Easter Bowl in 2002. The sisters also played in the girls’ doubles draw at the U.S. Open. Both Thompsons went undefeated in prep action at Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas, earning All-America honors in all four years, while winning three Nevada state championships.
The Thompsons’ victory continued the success of Midwest Region players in the NCAA Individual Championships. Four of six singles qualifiers were victorious in Monday’s opening round, while eighth-seeded Grier advanced to the round of 16 on Tuesday. Additionally, three of the five losses suffered came against players ranked among the nation’s top six, while Rush upset one of the No. 9-16 seeds, Jackie Carleton of UCLA, in the first round before falling. In doubles, Midwest pairs won four of six matches on Tuesday, with one of the losses coming in the ND-Illinois contest that was guaranteed to eliminate one of the region’s duos. Grier and Rush are the highest-seeded team (fifth) left in the draw, while Linda Tran and Sarah Batty of Indiana upset the third-seeded duo of Amanda Johnson and Tory Zawacki of Duke. Michigan’s team of Michelle DaCosta and Kara Delicata, ranked 41st and the second-lowest-ranked team in the field, knocked off #14 Sarah Foster and Aibika Kalsarieva of Kentucky.
The opening day of play saw a shocking number of upsets in the 32-team NCAA doubles draw, as just five of the 16 first-round contests saw the higher-ranked team prevail. Five of the eight seeded duos – including each of the top four – suffered defeats on the first day of action. Ten of the teams that advanced to the round of 16 are not ranked among the top 16, and four are not even in the top 30.
NCAA Division I Doubles Championship
First Round
#36 Catrina Thompson/Christian Thompson (Notre Dame) def. #15 Cynthya Goulet/Jennifer McGaffigan (Illinois) 2-6, 6-2, 6-2