East Carolina Reinstates Women's Tennis; Duke Signs Berankova; Turati Earns First WTA Victory; Brooksby, Holt Reach UTR Newport Beach $25K Semifinals
Some much needed good news on the college tennis front today, with Division I East Carolina announcing that women's tennis would be returning, along with women's swimming and diving. In May, the University cut the men's and women's swimming and diving and tennis programs, but from the announcement, it sounds as if that decision may have presented Title IX problems, so the two women's sports are returning, although a firm date has not yet been set, with the earliest reinstatement, after hiring of coaches, would be this fall. More on the litigation that might have been responsible for this decision is here.
Duke has added a former ITF Top 50 junior for this season, with 20-year-old Karolina Berankova of the Czech Republic joining the Blue Devils. Berankova, who reached a high of 43 in the ITF junior rankings back in 2017, has been playing ITF World Tennis Tour women's events regularly since mid-2018, reaching a career-high of 600 in the WTA rankings.
Baylor has announced that sophomore Isabella Harvison is transferring from Alabama, but according to the email I received, is "not immediately eligible" to compete for the Bears.
Bianca Turati made her debut on the WTA level one to remember, defeating former WTA Top 25 player Yaroslava Shvedova of Kazakhstan 6-1, 6-2 today at the 500-level event in Abu Dhabi. The 23-year-old from Italy, who decided last May not to return to the University of Texas for a fifth year, will face Veronika Kudermetova of Russia in the second round on Friday.
Coco Gauff defeated alternate Ulrikke Eikeri of Norway 6-0, 6-1 and top seed Sofia Kenin advanced with a 7-6(4), 6-2 win over qualifier Zhaoxuan Yang of China. Jessica Pegula and Jennifer Brady(UCLA)[11] lost their first round matches today.
At the ATP 250 in Delray Beach, Tommy Paul[5] defeated Ji Sung Nam of Korea 6-1, 6-4 and Sebastian Korda beat Soonwoo Kwon of Korea 6-4, 6-4. Mackenzie McDonald(UCLA) and Sam Querrey[6] are in action in the night match. Paul and Korda will meet in the second round.
The quarterfinals of the men's UTR $25K in Newport Beach California are being played today, with three of the four semifinalists decided as of 8 p.m. Eastern time.
Top seed Jenson Brooksby(Baylor) defeated Dusty Boyer(Nebraska) 6-2, 6-3 and will play the winner of the match between Stanford freshman Tristan Boyer and former TCU standout Reese Stalder. The other semifinal will feature No. 2 seed Brandon Holt(USC) and UCLA junior Govind Nanda. Holt defeated UCLA signee Karl Lee 6-2, 6-0 and Nanda beat Nicolas Barrientos of Colombia 6-2, 6-3.
The semifinal draw for the women's $25K in Naples Florida is not yet posted, but I believe the four players advancing out of the round robin groups are Maria Mateas(Duke), Reese Brantmeier, Ayana Akli(Maryland) and Jessica Livianu(St. Johns).
6 comments:
Great to see ECU women's tennis come back, but 6 of top 7 singles all foreign on 2019-20 roster. Like you said the only reason women's tennis is back is title 9, I think ever one should have equal access to playa sport, but title 9 should be adjusted for football which has 85 scholarships. Have women's sports adjusted down around 30 or 40 less so you are not forcing so many scholarships, women's tennis at 8 vs 4.5 for men's is crazy:
Swimming W 14 M 10
Water Polo W 8 M 4.5
Soccer W 14 M 10
Ice Hockey W 18 M 18
This is all because of football which is one of two sports that brings in revenue
Title IX does not look at individual sports, it is a budgeting number. Yes football has 85, it doesn't have to have that many. BUT since it does women's sports require equal money. So after Soccer, it takes a lot of small teams to equal 85 + the rest of the Men's Sports. I've often said maybe if you allowed Universities to give scholarship money to Sports "Support Majors", Physical Therapy, Sports Medicine etc, you could achieve the ultimate goal of spreading the funds, without having a bunch of barley competitive women's teams. I know "barley competitive" is a trojan horse, when you consider Vanderbilt football is a joke.
So Swimming, Water Polo, Soccer, Hockey, etc are luck they even have a team. If it was not for the women's counterparts (many not competitive) they would have ZERO.
Yes Swimming has 14 but that 14 allows the men to have 10, and so on. I think you are looking at it from the wrong perspective.
Divsion 1 schools are required to have at least 7 sports for both men and women or 6 for men and 8 for women. Any school that plays D1 football (also Men's Lacrosse) has to have a lot of women's teams to make up the difference. The two ways of being compliant in title 9 are adding women's sports and cutting men's. The teams that are suffering the most for men are Wrestling, Gymnastics, Volleyball, Water Polo, and Tennis. I am all for as many teams that are financially feasible for the school, if that means to have fewer sports or requiring non-revenue sports to self-fund I get it.
There is no possible reason women should have double scholarships than men other than title 9, I don't think anyone can argue that there is more participation (draw size or any other measure) on the girl's/women's side. When you add the foreign component to men's tennis 4.5 scholarships it is pretty rough. My college coach left for a women's job after I graduated was unable to give out 8 scholarships to D1 quality players.
Need some help here, so a 20 yr old foreigner who has tried the tour can come to school here on scholarship but an American who takes a gap year cannot compete in the 6 months prior to starting school
@Max Ho - 85 Scholarships for Football is the issue. Of course you need MANY more women's teams to get to the number. No one is arguing Title IX hasn't forced more women's teams OR more scholarship money for fewer teams. If a University added 15 More Women's sports, they'd offer partial scholarships to not exceed their budget and be in compliance with Title IX.
So the issue mens sports start at a deficit of 85, while still having 7 additional Sports. I'd bet if they removed that number you'd have fewer mens sports and more FULL Scholarships for men. Maybe the answer is Womens Football (actually) it is part of why I felt the push for Lacrosse to be expanded across HS Athletic Depts. Truly that is where id focus my efforts, and shrink the Football scholarship pool.
No argument that football is still king. But one thing to keep an eye on is that participation is dropping at the youth level. HS participation dropped an average of about 25,000 players over a recent 3-year stretch. It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the long term.
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