Duke, USC, Stanford Among Those Posting Signing Announcements; UTR Announces $20K Naples FL Tournament for December; More on Nakashima's First Challenger Title

Most of the top schools have already published their National Letter of Intent signing announcements, but a few more have surfaced over the past couple of days.  UCLA has yet to post any updates on their website, but tweets have announced that the women's program has signed Elise Wagle, Ava Catanzarite and Kimmi Hance, while the men's program has signed Alexander Hoogmartens, Spencer Johnson and Karl Lee.

Women:

Duke has signed two blue chips from the Midwest, Emma Jackson and Ellie Coleman. I spoke to Coleman about her choice of Duke back in February for this article at Tennis Recruiting Network. 

Southern California has signed Great Britain's Grace Piper, Leyden Games and Sloane Morra. 

Men:

North Carolina State has signed Braden Shick, the Netherlands' Fons Van Sambeek and Joe Wayand.

Purdue has signed Gabriele Brancatelli.

Stanford has signed Great Britain's Max Basing.

Utah has signed Canada's Chris Heck.

Late last week UTR announced a big prize men's money tournament next month at the Sanchez-Casal Academy in Naples Florida. The $20,000 purse will be distributed in the same fashion as last week's UTR tournament in Cancun, with $4000 to the winner and $2200 to the runner-up. Scheduled for December 13-20, the format is also the same as in Cancun, with positions after competition in round robin groups determining the late stage single elimination portion of the tournament later in the week.

For more on this event, see the UTR tournament page.

The ATP does a great job of spotlighting the winners of its Challenger tournaments, and with this week's title, his first on the Challenger Circuit, Brandon Nakashima gets his due. Nakashima spoke with USTA stream commentator Mike Cation after his title, with insights into the development of his game, his lackluster results this fall on the clay swing, and his (ambitious) ranking goal.