Now classified as a sophomore, Cindy Nguyen continues to reap the rewards of her breakout freshman season.

Nguyen closed her first year with the Hawaii women’s tennis team as the first Rainbow Wahine player to qualify for the NCAA singles championships. She enters her second year ranked 96th in the nation and opens the season in the prestigious Riviera/ITA Women’s All-American Championships in Los Angeles.

Nguyen is entered in the tournament’s prequalifier, which begins Saturday at UCLA. The top 24 players in the nation are given berths in the main draw and Nguyen would have to survive five matches to earn one of the eight remaining spots. The main draw is set for Oct. 2 to 5 at Riviera Tennis Club.

"I think the ITA may be even tougher than the NCAAs," Nguyen said. "The NCAA is, of course, the national tournament, but the ITA has a broader spectrum of players and everybody is a good player and everybody has a chance to win."

Nguyen played her way into that realm by going 22-5 overall and 6-1 in Big West play last season, rising to No. 123 in the nation. She earned a bid to the NCAA tournament as the Big West’s highest-ranked player and closed the year with a first-round loss to Breaunna Addison of Texas, who enters the year ranked 13th.

Nguyen is the only Big West player among the 125 in the preseason ranking and is the fourth from UH selected to the ITA tournament.

"She’s doing a lot on her own so you can tell she really wants it and told me she wants to redeem herself from the NCAAs," said UH coach Jun Hernandez, who will accompany Nguyen to L.A.

"(The NCAA berth) just really opened her eyes as far as what she can do and what she can achieve in the future. But she wants more and she’s working hard and putting a lot of time and effort in it."

Just as having the ITA tournament awaiting spurred Nguyen’s offseason training, the impact of her breakthrough permeated through the roster and she found a motivated group of teammates when she returned to campus.

"My teammates have been working so much harder and they’ve been pushing me to work harder," Nguyen said. "I was guilty of getting comfortable in where I was standing and my teammates were pushing me every single day."

Although the team’s first official practice is set for Saturday, "the girls were coming out to the courts and saying, ‘we have to practice, let’s get better.’ We want to win, we want to do the best we can do. … The intrinsic motivation has escalated."

Nguyen will be playing her first match of the ITA tournament when the Rainbow Wahine go through their first full practice. They open the fall schedule Oct. 3 by hosting Chaminade and Hawaii Pacific in a tournament.

Nguyen is among six returnees to UH’s seven-player fall roster. Freshman Viktoria Malova joins the program from Slovakia and was ranked as high as 22nd in the world as a junior.