Junior Orange Bowl Begins Tuesday at Three Locations; USTA's Collegiate Winter Wild Card Playoff Starts Tuesday at Lake Nona

The 58th edition of the Junior Orange Bowl begins Tuesday at three locations in the Miami area, but not, this year, at the University of Miami, which has been the main site for most of the 16 years I've been covering the event. Due to construction, the Schiff Tennis Center is not available this year, so the main site is the William Kerdyk Tennis Center at the Biltmore Hotel, which will be the site of all the girls 14s matches plus the semifinals and finals for the boys 14s and girls 12s. Prior to the semifinals, the girls 12s and boys 14s will be played at Crandon Park on Key Biscayne. The boys 12s will be played on the green clay at Salvadore Park in Coral Gables, as usual.

Play begins at 8 a.m. at all three locations Tuesday, and the top 8 seeds are listed below. Complete draws, with times, are posted at the Tennis Link site. I'm not sure why the girls 14s draw has three top eight seeds (1, 7 and 8) in the top quarter, while the bottom quarter has three No. 9 seeds, instead of two.

Boys 12s:
1. Sebastian Arcila (COL)
2. Maxell Exsted (USA)
3. Changmin Ryu (KOR)
4. Manas Dhamne (IND)
5. Oliver Narbut (USA)
6. Benjamin Gusic-Wan (GBR)
7. Mark Krupkin (USA)
8. Gregory Vrel-Nagel (FRA)

Girls 12s:
1. Mingge Xu (GBR)
2. Alina Korneeva (RUS)
3. Hephzibah Oluwadare (GBR)
4. Thea Latak (USA)
5. Yelysaveta Kotliar (UKR)
6. Bella Payne (USA)
7. Claire An (USA)
8. Mirra Andreeva (RUS)

Boys 14s:
1. Kyle Kang (USA)
2. Nishesh Basavareddy (USA)
3. Rashed Naif (QAT)
4. Alexandru Mihai Coman (ROU)
5. Nahuel Nicolas Eli (ARG)
6. Lennon Jones (JPN)
7. Rodrigo Pacheco Mendez (MEX)
8. Cooper Williams (USA)

Girls 14s:
1. Kayla Cross (CAN)
2. Nikola Daubnerova (SVK)
3. Cadence Brace (CAN)
4. Aya El Aouni (MAR)
5. Daria Zukova (RUS)
6. Luciana Moyano (ARG)
7. Lucciana Perez (PER)
8. Maya Joint (USA)

The USTA is holding its second annual American Collegiate Winter Wild Card Playoff in Lake Nona beginning tomorrow and ending on December 21. A total of nine USTA Pro Circuit wild cards are at stake, including a big one for the men's winner into the ATP Challenger 110 in Dallas in February.  A complete rundown of the wild cards being awarded (and their restrictions) is available here.

The men participating are:
William Blumberg, North Carolina
Trent Bryde, Georgia
Brandon Holt, USC
Cannon Kingsley, Ohio State
Govind Nanda, UCLA
Sam Riffice, Florida
Alex Rotsaert, Stanford
Riley Smith, USC

The women participating are:
Chloe Beck, Duke
Sara Daavettila, North Carolina
Abigail Forbes, UCLA
Alexa Graham, North Carolina
Mia Horvit, South Carolina
Adriana Reami, NC State
Christina Rosca, Vanderbilt
Natasha Subhash, Virginia

Stanford's Michaela Gordon and TCU's Alex Rybakov were last year's playoff winners.