Imagine two 11-year-olds on a changeover giggling and sharing snacks their mothers packed trying to stay focused at one of the bigger Southern California junior tournaments – think Woody Hunt or JP Yamasaki or at Junior Sectionals.

Fast forward a few years and current UCLA freshmen Olivia Center and Kate Fakih are now both 18 and have faced the ultimate highs a junior and aspiring pro tennis player can experience.

After splitting sets and winning a super tiebreaker in the quarterfinals and semis of the recent NCAA Individual Doubles Championships in Waco, Texas, Center and Fakih once again faced a first-to-10 breaker that would determine the national champion just weeks after they arrived on the Westwood campus and playing the event for the first time since it was moved from spring to fall on a two-year trial basis.

But it wasn’t to be for the UCLA pairing seeking to become the eighth Bruin doubles team to win a national title as Mélodie Collard and Elaine Chervinsky from the University of Virginia pulled out a. 4-6, 6-3, 10-5, victory for the program’s first NCAA doubles crown.

“I felt like in the previous tiebreaks we played so aggressively,” Center said. “[In the final] We didn’t come out swinging and they gained a big lead and it’s hard to switch the momentum in a super tiebreaker.”

Center and Fakih grew up nearby each other in Pasadena and shared the same coaches and often car-pooled to lessons at the iTennis Whittier Narrows Academy. They also spent hours on court with their coach Zibu Ncube, who is from Zimbabwe, in Woodland Hills and say he had the biggest influence on them in terms of development.

“We’ve been playing together since we were 10,” Fakih said in a post-match video conference at the NCAAs. “I feel like she knows what I’m thinking, and I don’t even know what I’m thinking yet. And I feel like I know what she’s thinking, and she doesn’t even know it.”

Fakih, who has already been named Big Ten Player of the Week twice this season, added, “I think that trust is really, really crucial for our success and I have a lot of confidence in us and our chemistry.”

Center was asked this week to rank the pair’s impressive finals run at the NCAAs to the other big moments they have experienced – namely winning the USTA Billie Jean King 18s Nationals in 2023 and playing in the main draw of the US Open.

“I think it would be in the top three and those would out-rank it,” Center said. “Especially now that we’re representing a school it was definitely nerve-wracking.”

She added: “I think being in those situations and those big moments at the US Open and the Girls’ Nationals makes it feel more familiar, and we have the confidence and know we can play at such a high level.”

Center and Fakih made their pro debut as partners during the 2023 SoCal Pro Series Lakewood event losing in the first round to a pair of elite college players from NCAA champion North Carolina – Fiona Crawley and Reese Brantmeier. The two paired up again for two more SoCal Pro Series tourneys in 2024 reaching the semifinals at the Kramer Club and Lakewood.

Center said there are too many matches to recall anything that stands out when they were younger. “I remember one match at Great Park in Irvine and we were playing in the semifinals of the 12s and just being so nervous and hoping to make it to the final,” she said. “There are just so many of them.”

There were other “snacking” moments. Like the time during the Jim Buck competition and they were placed on opposite teams. Center recalled, “We were playing singles and on changeovers would just sit there and talk like we were having a picnic.”

Even after a big loss, Center said she knows there will never be a defeat that will tear the two apart because of the friendship built around so many years, and so many matches.

“We’re so close that we know that whatever happens in a match we’re still going to be friends after and always be there for each other.”