Richterova Plays to the Crowd in Three-Set Victory

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FORT COLLINS, Colo. – Sometimes things are not as they appear. Others, they are very crystal clear.

What everybody saw flowing from Sarka Richterova on Friday night at the Fort Collins Country Club was pure and true. The junior from the Czech Republic was a white flame of emotion from start to finish in her No. 1 singles match with Gonzaga's Cate Broerman, who also spent the entire two-plus hour match exploding after every point won.

They spent the entire time fighting for every advantage they could, spending the evening firing bullets at each other and riding every wave they could find. Most of them were short lived, as gaining an advantage was like a white flame, burning so hot it was gone in an instant.

But in the final set, Richterova picked up the break she needed to pull out a 4-6, 6-4, 6-4 victory, one of the most memorable of her collegiate career.

"This energy, it's maybe happened to me maybe three times in my life. It was just awesome," she said. "Most of it was the crowd, about 95 percent was the crowd. I love so much to play for the crowd, and it's not so common in tennis if you don't play at the top level, so this was a special moment."

It most certainly was, with the Rams securing a 4-2 team win after Cinderella's bed time.

Richterova is a player who likes to show emotion and play with energy, but she said Broerman took her normal degree to an entirely different level. Playing someone, she said, who is also a talented player can do nothing but force you to raise your game.

Richterova wore a smile most of the night, and she did all she could to play up to the crowd, which packed the overlook at the country club's indoor courts. They both put on a show worthy of an attentive audience.

"It was so much fun. That's why I play tennis," she said. "Those matches are why I play tennis. She brought out the best in me, because she was playing so well.

"I'm always fired up. But when there's so much energy from the people and everybody is cheering and I'm playing not for me, but for them, it's a different level."

Even with three matches being played simultaneously, the majority of the crowd and the players not on the court couldn't take their eyes off the action. The emotion on display was a magnet.

The set scores suggest exactly how tight the match was, but not in full detail. If it wasn't for the no-ad scoring in operation, the two may have played well past the match's final end time around midnight. There were no real breaking points, because they happened so often for both players. It came down to survival.

"All the no-ads, I think there were an insane amount. Maybe 20, something like that," Richterova said. "Every point counts. There wasn't really a breaking point, because there were so many of them. Matches like that are better. Sometimes it's worse when it's easy, because you can break focus. Here, it flows so much there's no possible chance of not being focused.

"I mean, right now, I'm not exhausted because I won. If I would probably have cried. Because I won, I'm mentally happy. Even the legs are still fine, but I know I'm going to feel this match tomorrow morning."

Down on the far end of the facility, her friend from back home was feeling every single point of her match, nearly from the start. At No. 3 singles, Radka Buzkova had taken a medical timeout after the third game because she strained an abdominal muscle.

Her service game as affected the most, but as anybody who has had a core-body injury knows, any movement is painful.

That was Buzkova's night. On a normal night, she likes to play with emotion herself. In this instance, she was trying to make it through, which she did with a straight-sets 6-2. 6-4 win.

"I don't feel good about the way I played. I just wanted to play a normal match," Buzkova said. "I was just playing to get the ball back, and she was making mistakes. She saw I was injured, so I think she was nervous too. I gutted that one out.

"I wasn't able to serve; my serve was really bad. I tried to focus on normal shots, but I couldn't, because I was thinking about all the stuff, people are watching and I can't play normally, but I was sad. I cried two times."

Still, she never really showed it outwardly. She tried to move as normally as she could, but she wasn't about to celebrate anything at any time.

Wins are nice, and on any other occasion, she would have had plenty to be happy about. She and Matea Mihaljevic, ranked No. 40 in the country at doubles, won 6-2 at the start of the night, their 18^th victory of the season, moving them both into a tie for 10^th place in program history with 18 doubles wins on the year.

Her win at singles was her team-leading 13^th of the year, but all the happiness was erased by the extremely uncomfortable feeling she developed with every movement, even walking off the court.

"I'm in a lot of pain. Abs are the worse, because you feel it doing everything," she said. "Especially serve. My forehand and backhand were alright, but I had it in the back of my mind, so I was considering that and not focusing on how I should play."

The Zags took the early lead with the doubles point, winning 6-4 at No. 1 and 6-3 at No. 2 as the Rams played without Lucia Natal.

CSU coach Mai-Ly Tran expected a fight between two evenly matched teams, and that's exactly what played out when singles took the court. Only two matches didn't go to a third set, Buzkova and that of her doubles partner, Mihaljevic, who needed a first-set tiebreak to win 7-6 (5), 6-3 at No. 4.

The rest all needed a third, and at 12:02 a.m., Saturday morning, freshman Sarah Weekley secured the Rams' team win with a 4-6, 6-4, 6-2 win at No. 5. The fact the Rams start practice twice a week at 9 p.m. had them feeling they were in their element.

"I think coming out of the doubles we were still confident. They played great. Gonzaga played great," Tran said. "We expected them to play well. I think we just continued to put pressure on them the entire time, and there was a confidence in the girls. They enjoyed playing at home in front of the fans, and the fans gave us an extra edge. It was a night match, something we haven't done before, and I think they handled it so well."

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