After capturing its 21st consecutive conference title, the No. 2 Stanford women’s tennis team was expecting to be well-represented and ready to contend at the 2008 Pac-10 Championships.

Unfortunately, the Cardinal women finished play at Ojai, Calif. a bit earlier than they had hoped for.

“We went down there and competed and we won some matches,” head coach Lele Forood said. “We would’ve liked to win a few more of them but that’s how it goes. You never know who’s going to get hot at that tournament.”

Freshmen Hilary Barte and Jennifer Yen reached the quarterfinals of their singles bracket, but that was one of only a few bright spots for Stanford. Instead, the losses abounded.

In all, four Cardinal women suffered defeat at the hands of California opponents, whom the team beat 5-2 in its season finale.

No other loss was as significant as Barte’s quarterfinal match against Cal’s Claire Ilcinkas, in which she retired because of a strained pectoral muscle.

The loss ended Barte’s 19-match win streak and marked just her second defeat to a Pac-10 opponent.

“It’s just a strain,” Forood said. “So she’s going to do a lot of therapy this week and she’ll be okay.”

The injury bug also caught junior Jessica Nguyen and senior Celia Durkin, who did not play in the singles championships.

Nguyen, however, was able to compete with senior Whitney Deason in the doubles bracket, winning against the Abdala sisters of Arizona State before dropping 8-5 to Cal’s Susie Babos and Stephanie Kusano.

“Jessica seemed to have a good match in the first round against the Abdala sisters of ASU and lost against the Cal team,” Forood said. “They made a nice comeback and eventually lost that one. That was fine — it was a good chance to play a few matches and keep working on their teamwork.”

Also representing the Cardinal was the team of Barte and sophomore Lindsay Burdette, the third seed in the doubles bracket.

Despite their ranking, the duo shockingly dropped their first round match to Cal’s Bojana Bobusic and Cristina Visico 8-6.

“That was a little surprising,” Forood said of the match. “They just made too many mistakes in that match and we weren’t able to recover from that.”

In what should have been a tournament dominated by Stanford, UCLA shined the most with three individual titles.

In the end, with Barte out of the competition, UCLA’s Riza Zalameda claimed the Pac-10 singles title.

Fellow Bruin Alex McGoodwin claimed the Invitational singles bracket, while McGoodwin and Andrea Remynse claimed the Invitational doubles title.

Despite the subpar showing, Ojai is not indicative of the Cardinal’s true capabilities.

“Ojai’s such a different kind of event,” Forood said. “Everybody plays really loose and the matches are totally different from dual match play. You just go out there, bring what you got that day and hopefully you’re successful.

Now, Stanford must wait until Tuesday when it finds out who its first round NCAA opponent will be.

As a top-ranked school, the Cardinal women are expecting to host the first two rounds of this year’s tournament.

“The next thing we’re doing is the draw show on Tuesday to know our first and second round opponents,” Forood said. “We look forward to finding out Tuesday who we play in the first round of the tournament. And we’ll work hard in the next week and a half to get ready to play those.”

“We got to get a few people playing back again,” Forood said. “As usual its going to be a lot about our physical therapy appointments this week, making sure everybody’s getting healthy so that we can get a full week’s practice next week. And we’ll just work on people who are healthy and ready to go to tune up their games a bit.”

If the Cardinal can get healthy fast, then it has a chance to make a dent in this year’s tourney.

After maturing through the elements as a squad this season, Stanford is fully aware of what they are capable.

“You don’t learn anything new at this point in the season,” Forood said. “You just tune yourself up a little bit.”