Hawaii’s Nguyen drops NCAA first-round match

After being eliminated from the NCAA Women’s Tennis Championship on Wednesday, University of Hawaii freshman Cindy Nguyen was already focused on working her way back.

Nguyen’s season ended with a 7-5, 6-2 loss to 12th-ranked Breaunna Addison of Texas in the first-round of the 64-player tournament at the University of Georgia’s Dan Magill Tennis Complex in Athens, Ga.

Along with her on-court experience in the singles bracket, watching the team tournament during her stay in Georgia "gave me so much more motivation to be training over the summer and to talk to my teammates and tell them this is completely possible for us to be doing," Nguyen said. "All we have to do is work hard and play smart and maybe one day we can make it all together."

Nguyen, a first-team All-Big West selection, entered the tournament at No. 123 in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association rankings and had an 11-match win streak snapped on Wednesday.

Addison, the Big 12 Player of the Year, won the first three games of the opening set, but Nguyen rallied to knot the set at 4-4. Addison broke Nguyen’s serve to take a 6-5 lead, then held serve to end the set.

"I started off kind of slow but I tried to recover from that and I had some crucial points that I just couldn’t capitalize on that changed the whole outcome of the match," Nguyen said. "There were a couple of points where I need to be more aggressive with my feet and I needed to play a little smarter, but I just hesitated."

Addison, who reached the semifinals of last year’s NCAA singles tournament, jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the second set before advancing to the tournament’s round of 32 while Nguyen ended the season at 22-5.

"I couldn’t have asked for a better freshman year," Nguyen said. "I learned so much. I think my game has improved so much under Coach Jun (Hernandez) and playing with the girls has helped me improve as a person as a whole."