Division I Signing Announcements Rolling In; UCLA's Smith, Illinois's Brown Among Six Americans in Champaign Challenger Quarterfinals

Photo by Ben Mullins on Unsplash

Yesterday was the first day that high school seniors could sign Division I National Letters of Intent, and by today, a great many schools have provided announcements of their new recruits. Some have only put out notices on Twitter, but I am going to stick to those who have posted a website article. If the nationality of the player is not given, they are from the United States.

MEN:
The University of Texas announced their second consecutive outstanding class, with Leighton Allen, Eliot Spizzirri and Micah Braswell signing yesterday. Spizzirri will be joining the Longhorns in January.

Boise State has signed Caden Moortgat.
Florida State has signed John Bernard and Maks Silagy.
Illinois has signed Hunter Heck.
LSU has signed Ben Koch.
Michigan State has signed Luke Baylis, Reed Crocker and Graydon Lair.
SMU has signed Liam Krall and Callaway Clark.
South Carolina has signed Carter Morgan and Great Britain's Toby Samuel.
Southern California has signed Sean Holt, senior Brandon Holt's brother.
Utah has signed Bruno Krenn and Wally Thane.

WOMEN:
Alabama has signed Anne Marie Hiser, Sydney Orefice and Czech Republic's Vanesa Nikolovova.
Clemson has signed Jenna Thompson and Sophia Hatton.
Florida State has signed Lara Schneider and Italy's Alice Amendola.
Georgia Tech has signed Ava Hrastar, India's Mahak Jain and Croatia's Monika Dedaj. Dedaj will start in January.
Illinois has signed Katherine Duong.
Michigan has signed Jaedan Brown and Kari Miller.
Oklahoma has signed Carmen Corley; her sister Ivana is a sophomore at Oklahoma.
Oklahoma State announced that Lenka Stara of Slovakia will be joining the team in January.
Oregon has signed Janice Tjen of Indonesia.
South Carolina has signed Corina Spasojevic of Canada.
Vanderbilt has signed Anessa Lee.

I will continue to monitor signings for the next few days and make sure you check the Tennis Recruiting Network often, as they are adding commitment stories throughout the week.

Rain kept any matches from being played at the WTA 125 and ATP Challenger 125 in Houston today. See the Oracle Challenger website for the link to Friday's schedule.

There are no such issues at the ATP Challenger 80 in Champaign, where the indoor courts have been kind to Americans. Six players from the United States have reached the quarterfinals, including UCLA junior Keegan Smith and Illinois junior Alex Brown, both of whom received wild cards. Smith, the 2019 NCAA doubles champion, was at the top of his game against 2016 NCAA singles finalist Mikael Torpegaard(Ohio State) of Denmark, breezing to a 6-0, 6-3 victory over the No. 4 seed in an hour and six minutes. Brown, who obviously has a home court advantage, took out No. 2 seed Blaz Rola(Ohio State) of Slovenia in the second round and tonight defeated No. 13 seed JC Aragone(Virginia) 7-6(5), 6-3.

No. 9 seed JJ Wolf (Ohio State) will play unseeded Stefan Kozlov in one quarterfinal, while Smith faces unseeded Blaz Kavcic of Slovenia in the other quarterfinal in the top half. Martin Redlicki(UCLA) will play No. 14 seed Sebastian Korda and Brown will take on Juan Pablo Ficovich of Argentina, the No. 8 seed.

Live streaming is available at the ATP Challenger home page.