Kurtistown’s Sarah Dvorak has been on the Big Island tennis radar for much of the past decade.
Dvorak first made a name for herself as an up-and-coming middle schooler taking down the best high school players in the state, then she moved on to claim two BIIF singles titles at Waiakea before focusing her final two years of high school on the junior circuit and becoming a high-profile recruit at Texas Tech.
Flash forward to Dvorak’s senior season, and the Red Raiders are in the Sweet 16 for the fourth consecutive year. Suffice to say, Dvorak does not want the ride to come to an end, not yet, and not on her watch.
So Dvorak was met with relief, joy and disbelief – not mention a throng of charging teammates – Thursday in Winston Salem, N.C., when she closed out No. 11 Texas Tech’s victory against No. 6 Texas, lifting the Red Raiders into the NCAA tournament quarterfinals for the second consecutive year.
“It’s so emotional to me, as soon as we won they started running at me and I started crying,” Dvorak said on a school video. “I couldn’t even move. I was frozen and they were jumping around me.”
Dvorak has been around the NCAA block many times by now, but she’ll try to reach a new frontier at 6 a.m. Saturday when Texas Tech takes on No. 3 Duke for a spot in the Final Four.
“This potentially could be the last match we’re all playing together, especially us four seniors,” Dvorak said of the team’s mindset against archrival Texas, which it had lost two twice this season. “Let’s just make this the most fun match we’ve played all year.
“That took the pressure off and we played our best tennis.”
She improved to 10-3 at No. 5 singles Thursday with a 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 win against the Longhorn’s Marta Perez-Mur. Her doubles match with Sabrina Federici, the duo is ranked No. 28 in the country, went unfinished.
Dvorak is the only Texas Texas player to win at least one of her matches during the Red Raiders’ six-match postseason run. They went won two contests at the Big 12 championships before falling to Texas in the final, then Texas Tech hosted a regional, beating Army and Illinois.
Dvorak was rated No. 125 by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association in late April before falling out of the May 3 rankings, but she enters the elite eight having not lost in singles since April 8, a span of 10 matches.
Dvorak is one of three Big Islanders playing Division I women’s tennis:
• New Mexico sophomore Diana Wong – a 2016 Hawaii Academy of Arts and Science graduate – played in the top half of the Lobos’ rotation, going 6-11 overall, including 2-7 at No. 1 singles. Wong’s record was 7-9 in doubles play, including 5-6 on court 2.
New Mexico (10-11) bowed out in the Mountain West quarterfinals in late April.
• University of Portland sophomore Emily Soares (Hilo, 2016) finished 4-11 in singles at Nos. 5-6. In doubles, Soares was 4-4.
The Pilots finished 5-15.