“I saw everyone on the bleachers come over to my court and I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh’,” Bergman said. “For such a big thing to go to Gainesville, I just felt so much pressure.”
With the home crowd cheering every point, Bergman played mistake-free tennis while Scribot crumbled, hitting shot after shot into the net.
“[Scribot] had all the shots, but she didn’t have Courtney’s toughness—that’s what it really came down to,” Graham said. “She had a great game, but there’s more to it than the shots. It’s the mental toughness. Bergman’s got that over anyone practically.”
Bergman’s greatest success came when her team needed her the most, but she was not as successful in individual tournaments. She lost in the first round of the NCAA singles tournament in May after straining a muscle in her forearm on the third point of her match.
Her greatest individual success came when she reached the Round of 16 at the OmniHotels/ITA National Intercollegiate Indoor Championships in the fall.
The fall season, which is primarily dominated by individual tournaments, gave some forewarning that the spring would be special. Two of the greatest success stories were Martire’s second-place finish in the OmniHotels Eastern Region Championships and Wang’s run through the consolation bracket of the Riviera/ITA Women’s All-American Championships in which she beat a player now ranked 15th in the nation.
The only downside of the fall was that so many Crimson players went deep into the All-American tournament that the team could not field a full roster to defend its ECAC indoor championship against Yale. But Harvard would get to avenge that defeat handily in the spring.
Bajin and classmate Liz Gass were the team’s only juniors or seniors, meaning that five of the mainstays in the Crimson lineup this season could be playing for the next two years, and the team could attain an even higher level of achievement next season.
“We’ll be more settled next time for [the NCAA tournament], even more prepared,” Bergman said. “This gave us a taste of it. It’ll make us train harder and want it a little more.”
—Staff writer David R. De Remer can be reached at deremer@post.harvard.edu.
WOMEN’S TENNIS
RECORD
21-5 overall, 19-4 spring
(7-0 Ivy, 1st place)
COACH Gordon Graham
CAPTAIN Sanja Bajin
HIGHLIGHTS Team sets school records with 21 victories and No. 14 end-of-year national ranking. Courtney Bergman upsets the nation’s fifth-ranked player to advance Harvard to the NCAA Round of 16.