STANFORD, Calif. – Stanford dominated Northwest Regional awards announced by the ITA on Wednesday. Cardinal coaches and student-athletes collected seven of the eight available honors, with Lele Forood winning Wilson ITA Coach of the Year and Frankie Brennan earning Assistant Coach of the Year accolades. Connie Ma won both the Arthur Ashe Leadership & Sportsmanship and Cissie Leary Sportsmanship awards, Alexandra Yepifanova was named Player to Watch, Katherine Hui was picked Rookie of the Year, and Angelica Blake earned Senior Player of the Year honors.
Forood and Brennan led the Cardinal to a 25-3 overall record this season and the NCAA quarterfinals for the 39th time in 42 NCAA Tournaments. Stanford went 7-2 against top-10 opponents in the spring and made a run to the program’s third consecutive Pac-12 Tournament title in Ojai, Calif. in late April. The award is Forood’s second consecutive and 11th overall, while Brennan also won his second in a row and eighth all-time.
On the court, Ma just wrapped up her second career All-America campaign. She picked up a pair of ranked wins as part of a run to the round of 16 at the NCAA Singles Championship in Stillwater, and wrapped up her season with a 40-6 overall record, a team-best 21-2 record in duals, and a 24-5 mark against nationally-ranked opponents. She was tied with Alexandra Yepifanova for second on the team in clinchers (5) and finished the season ranked seventh nationally.
Outside of tennis, the junior human biology major has a commitment to volunteer initiatives and desire to pursue medicine. She has been involved in Cardinal Free Clinics, which is a student-led clinic partnered with Stanford Healthcare, that provides free transitional care to those that don’t have a means of obtaining health insurance, or can’t afford to, as well as anyone else who are impacted by barriers to access. Ma currently works as a Mandarin interpreter, where she helps to bridge the language barrier between Mandarin-speaking patients and their families and medical staff. Ma is Stanford’s third consecutive regional winner of the Cissie Leary Award (Sara Choy – 2022, 2023) and the Cardinal’s first regional Arthur Ashe winner since Taylor Davidson in 2017.
This season, Alexandra Yepifanova became Stanford’s first back-to-back singles All-American since Michaela Gordon won three straight from 2018-20. She highlighted Stanford’s participation in Oklahoma with a run to the quarterfinals, which cemented her All-America…
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