CARY, N.C. — Pepperdine women's tennis senior Savannah Broadus is one match away from punching her ticket to the NCAA Singles Championship after beating Vanderbilt's #34 Bridget Stammel 6-2, 6-3 in the second round of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association All-American Championships on Thursday.
All eight quarterfinalists at the ITA All-American Championships will earn bids to the NCAA individual championships, which are held in the fall for the first time ever. To punch her ticket to Waco, Texas for NCAAs, Broadus must beat Old Dominion senior #31 Sofia Johnson in tomorrow's round of 16 match at a time that has yet to be determined.
Save for a brief rain delay early in the second set, Broadus couldn't be stopped in her straight-set victory. The senior All-American from Carrollton, Texas broke Stammel in the fourth game for a 3-1 lead, then didn't look back in the first set. Everything broke Broadus' way. Trailing 40-15 in the sixth game, Broadus rallied back to force deuce point and break Stammel for a 5-1 lead. Both players traded breaks over the next two games, leading to a 6-2 first-set win for Broadus.
With Broadus up 2-1 in the second set, a brief rain delay paused the matches at the Cary Tennis Park. Yet when the players returned to the court less than half an hour later, Broadus picked up right where she left off. Broadus broke Stammel in the fourth game and consolidated the break with a love hold, but was broken in the sixth game to make the score 4-2 in favor of Broadus. Another love hold from Broadus and another break point winner brought the match to the final game, which Broadus won with a forehand to the ad-side to cap off her 6-2, 6-3 victory.
This was the first-ever meeting between the two Dallas-area natives. Thursday's win was also Broadus' 105th career singles win, putting her five wins away from surpassing Pam Jung (1982-85) for the fifth-most wins in Pepperdine women's tennis history.
Broadus' match against Johnson will be the first-ever meeting between the two players. Johnson — the reigning Sun Belt Conference Player of the Year and an All-American — cruised to the round of 16 with a 6-2, 6-1 win over USC's Imogen Haddad on Thursday morning.
Elsewhere in the draw, Wisconsin's Maria Sholokhova upset the nation's top-ranked player Mary Stoiana of Texas A&M in straight sets, making Broadus the highest-ranked player remaining in her quadrant of the bracket. Stanford's #4 Connie Ma and Oklahoma State's #5 Ange Oby Kajuru are the only remaining players seeded higher than Broadus in the main singles draw.
RESULTS
Singles Round of 32
#8 Savannah Broadus (PEPP) def. #34 Bridget Stammel (VAND), 6-2, 6-3
FRIDAY'S MATCH
Singles Round of 16
#8
Savannah Broadus (PEPP) vs. #31 Sofia Johnson (ODU), TBA
