For the UCLA women’s tennis team, the outlook shortly after the beginning of the season was bleak. The Bruins had just come off a 1-2 outing at the National Team Indoors in Virginia, a tournament that they were hoping to win, and their record stood at a somewhat disappointing 7-4.

However, thanks to a dominant two- month-long stretch over March and April, UCLA finished out the season winning 12 of its final 13 regular-season matches. The Bruins, who finished the season ranked No. 4 in the nation, would go on to win four games in the NCAA Tournament before falling to eventual champion Florida Gators in the national semifinals, and wound up with a final record of 22-6, 7-1 Pac-10.

“I think I would give us an A-minus, only because we started off so bad,” senior Andrea Remynse said. “I think we started off at, like, a C, so I think we really improved throughout the year.”

This year’s team was not expected to perform as well as it did. Former No. 1 player Yasmin Schnack, the backbone of the team for two years, graduated after last season, leaving the Bruins with no true No. 1 player to fill that top spot.

Enter McCall Jones. A junior transfer from Brigham Young University, Jones struggled at times at the No. 1 position but found her rhythm at the perfect time, winning her first four matches at the NCAA Tournament.

“McCall really came through in the end,” coach Stella Sampras Webster said. “She really played her best tennis at the NCAAs. It just made our team so much better. It took some pressure off of the other girls knowing that McCall was playing well, and we really needed those wins.”

But the Bruins’ biggest strength this season came from the play of their backcourts, specifically senior Maya Johansson and junior Carling Seguso. The two amassed a combined singles record of 30-2, playing chiefly on courts No. 5 and 6, respectively.

“It’s definitely nice to have that confidence in your players at those positions,” Sampras Webster said. “They embraced it. They knew that those were points that the team needed, and they took that responsibility.”

The Bruins may not have been able to hoist the trophy in Palo Alto, but it was a season filled with good memories for Remynse and her teammates.

“Beating USC twice is always a big moment for women’s tennis,” Remynse said. “(But) I think for me, personally, beating Baylor was probably my favorite moment of the year. I had never been on a team, even 2008, that beat Baylor; we lost every year.”

However, Sampras Webster chose more of a turning point when asked to name her highlight of the season.

“(The period) after Team Indoors was a real eye-opener for us,” she said. “We definitely did not enjoy that tournament as far as our results. Coming back from there, I think everyone just wanted to come back and work really hard to raise the level of their game. Everyone’s effort really turned (the season) around.”

The Bruins will lose three graduating seniors between this season and the next – Remynse, Johansson and Noelle Hickey – but Sampras Webster is confident that the Bruins that fans saw this year are here to stay.

“We brought the program back to where it should be, and that’s to contend for a title,” Sampras Webster said. “Getting to the Final Four, for what we went through, I think we did quite well.”