By the end of the UF sports calendar year, 10 women’s athletes walked away as national champions.
Some of these players set and broke records, others carried their teams to new heights; but none of them put on a show like Florida tennis player Lauren Embree.
In the clinching match of the 2011 NCAA National Championship, the oft-injured Embree found herself drowning in a 4-0 deficit in the third set against rival Stanford’s Mallory Burdette.
Looking back, UF coach Roland Thornqvist can only describe the matches’ final moments as a blur.
On the brink of elimination, the sophomore staged an epic comeback as she took the next four games to even the frame and eventually force a tiebreaker.
In the final set, she put Burdette away and sealed Florida’s fifth national team title with a 5-7, 6-3, 7-6, (8-6) victory.
“What you see on the court is pretty much how she is off the court,” Embree’s coach said. “She’s very classy, but very determined. Her work ethic in rehabbing her injuries was a big key so she could even return in the spring.”
So many things were working against the Gators in the championship game, it made the resulting outcome look more like a Hollywood script. Embree was not only playing the defending champion Cardinal in front of 2,000 hostile fans on their home courts in Palo Alto, Calif., but she was also facing the same player who she fell to just a year prior in the 2010 national title match.
“When she got down 4-0 in the third, I was like ‘Oh, no, not again,’” Thornqvist said.
“You know same player, pretty much the same situation, but the winning moment, I can’t really remember the point. ...It was just like go out, ‘Go out, go out. Yes!’”
Embree’s victory snapped Stanford’s NCAA record home-match winning streak of 184.
It also broke the Cardinal’s stranglehold on the team title.
For her efforts, Embree was deservedly named the NCAA Tournament’s Most Outstanding Performer.
Like her title game match though, it seemed nothing would come easy for Embree during her second year with the Gators.
The sophomore missed the entire fall singles season after having two surgeries performed on her left wrist due to a ruptured tendon.
After a lengthy recovery, Embree bounced back from her time off and went a perfect 28-0 in singles play during the season, culminating in a semifinals berth in the NCAA Singles Championship just after the Gators’ team title.
“[Her toughness] is at a professional level,” Thornqvist said.
“She has a determination and a will to win that is unparalleled frankly.
In the championship moment that’s what you want, that’s what you need. .. She wants to win so badly that she takes risks.”
Another injury would again catch up to Embree — this time to her toe — forcing her to retire just a game away from the singles championship.
As her toenail ripped off and left an excruciating pain in her foot, Thornqvist said the missed opportunity did nothing but spur on Embree to strive for more this coming season.
“Having to bow out the way she did, obviously it will motivate her to do better in next year’s NCAA Tournament,” he said.
