All-American Finals Set in Charlotte $10K, Charlottesville $15K; Plambeck Wins Second Straight ITF Grade 4; Glenn Leaves Georgia

Qualifier Lauren Herring and wild card Caroline Price will meet for the singles title Sunday at the $10,000 women's USTA Pro Circuit event in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Herring, a North Carolina native who just graduated from the University of Georgia, and Price, a Georgia native who just graduated from the University of North Carolina, have had impressive runs in their first tournament since the NCAAs last month.

Herring lost her first set in seven matches today in a 6-1, 3-6, 6-0 win over lucky loser Kourtney Keegan, a rising junior at Florida.  Price had beaten the No. 3 and No. 5 seeds earlier this week and today eliminated No. 2 seed Alexandra Mueller 7-6(5), 6-0 to reach her first final in a professional tournament.

Herring and teammate Ellen Perez reached the doubles final, but came up short against top seeds Maria-Fernanda Alves of Brazil and Renata Zarazua of Mexico 6-4, 6-7(6), 10-8.

At the ITF men's $15,000 Futures in Charlottesville, Tennys Sandgren is into his third Futures final in his last three played. The third-seeded Sandgren beat Virginia's Collin Altamirano 6-1, 6-2 in the semifinals, and will play 18-year-old Ernesto Escobedo, the No. 8 seed, in the finals.  Escobedo defeated qualifier Ryan Haviland (Stanford) 6-0, 7-5.

The doubles title went to No. 3 seeds Hunter Nicholas (San Diego State) and New Zealand's Finn Tearney (Pepperdine) who beat unseeded Gonzales Austin(Vanderbilt) and Max Schnur(Columbia) 6-2, 6-2 in the final.

At the ITF Grade 4 in El Salvadore, Melissa Plambeck won her second straight title, having claimed the singles championship last week in the Costa Rica Grade 4.  The unseeded 15-year-old defeated the No. 6, No. 4 and No. 1 seeds to reach the final, where she downed No. 2 seed Saya Usui of Japan 3-6, 6-2, 6-3.

Brian Shi reached the final of the boys 64-draw, with the No. 9 seed falling to No. 3 seed Jose Fernando Carvajal Torres of Colombia 1-6, 6-4, 6-4.   Chase Burton and Sebastian Mermersky won the doubles title, with the No. 7 seeds beating the unseeded Argentine team of Franco Ribero and Francisco Vittar 6-3, 7-5.

In Wednesday's post, I mentioned some of the Division I college coaching changes, and more have since surfaced.

Yesterday, Will Glenn, the men's associate head coach at Georgia, announced his resignation.  Glenn, who played at Georgia and was an assistant coach under Manny Diaz for ten years, is planning to join the family business. Glenn was truly one of the nice guys in college coaching and will be greatly missed by not just Georgia, but throughout the college tennis community.

Scott Brown, who has been the men's volunteer assistant at Virginia for five years, is leaving for a position at the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, Maryland.

Shelley Godwin, the women's head coach at Middle Tennessee State, has left to become an assistant to Jenny Mainz at Alabama.

Although there has been no release from Yale regarding Taka Bertrand's departure as women's head coach after just one season, the athletic department has announced that assistant coach Matej Zlatkovic has been named interim head coach for the upcoming season.