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By Eric Perez

Daily Bruin Contributor

Before junior Sara Walker signed her letter of intent to come to UCLA, there was another school she thought seriously about attending. The University of Texas at Austin, a school where the majority of her friends would go, the school where her brother now plays tennis, and a school located closed to where her grandfather lives.

But the lure of UCLA, her teammates and the coaching staff proved far too irresistible an environment.

Now, three years later, as a Bruin, she will travel with the rest of the No.7 UCLA women’s tennis team to Austin to take on No. 10 University of Texas on Saturday.

“Texas is home to me,” said Walker, an El Paso native, who is ranked No. 4 in the nation. “It’s going to be fun going back and seeing my brother and all of my friends who go to school there. The thing with me is when I go down there I really want to beat them.”

Beating the Longhorns (6-0) will not be easy. The Bruins (8-0) travel into the depths of the southwest with a good old-fashioned bull’s eye attached to them. UCLA will play a top-10 team for the first time this season as the favorites.

“We are doing well right now,” senior Petya Marinova said. “We started the season at No. 16, and no one has really expected us to come out and be as good as we are By continuing to win we are going to prove we are back and are contenders for the NCAA championship.”

They go into Penick-Allison Tennis Center facing up against a hostile home crowd that is known to fill up the house with enthusiastic Longhorn fans. The Bruins, however, claim that it will not deter them from coming into Texas and taking a dual-match victory.

“I have heard they have a lot of fans,” freshman Sarah Gregg said. “But that will probably just get us pumped anyway. It had worked for us against ’SC when their band was playing and it got us going more than it did for USC.”

Band or no band, the Bruins will have to bring their “A” game to Austin, because they will be facing an environment only Walker knows intimately.

“Playing for the University of Texas and sports in general is such a big deal in Texas,” Walker said. “They have so many fans that come out to the matches. The team is feisty and they are not going to give you any free points, so we’re going to have to work hard to beat them.”