Seeds and Draws for USTA Winter Nationals 16s and 18s; Orange Bowl Photo Gallery; Four-time NCAA Champion Chong Wins $15K in Tunisia

The draws have been posted for the USTA's 18s and 16s Winter Nationals in Lake Nona, which begin on Tuesday. The 12s and 14s draws are not yet posted, but should be available tomorrow.

Below are the Top 16 seeds in each of the four draws for the event at the USTA National Campus.

USTA Winter Nationals

Top 16 seeds:

B16s:

1. Ari Cotoulas

2. Mitchell Lee

3. Callum Markowitz

4. Andrew Ena

5. Aaron Sandler

6. Kaveh Taheri

7. Declan Galligan

8. Noah McDonald

9. Rahul Sachdev

10. Ian Bracks

11. William Hsieh

12. Jordan Reznik

13. Carter Pate

14. Krish Arora

15. Vincent Yang

16. Kane Kelley

B18s:

1. Alexander Visser

2. Bjorn Swenson

3. Masato Perera

4. Nicholas Heng

5. Dean Kamenev

6. Kian Vakili

7. Vignesh Gogineni

8. Chad Miller

9. Landon Ardila

10. Marko Mesarovic

11. Rohan Sachdev

12. Jason Shuler

13. Grant Lothringer

14. Emon Van Loben Sels

15. Jelani Sarr

16. Ryan Torres

G16s:

1. Saray Yli-Piipari

2. Jessica Bernales

3. Ariel Madatali

4. Natasha Rajaram

5. Olivia Center

6. Elena Daskalova

7. Clara Zou

8. Maren Urata

9. Kate Fakih

10. withdrew

11. Emily Deming

12. Andrea De Los Rios Martinez

13. Pearlie Zhang

14. Madeleine Rexroat

15. Sophia Webster

16. Trinetra Vijayakumar

G18s:

1. Akari Matsuno

2. Ariana Pursoo

3. Ahmani Guichard

4. Charlotte Owensby

5. Alice Xu

6. Ann Guerry

7. Katie Codd

8. (withdrew)

9. Jo-Yee Chan

10. Gayathri Krishnan

11. Reese Miller

12. Sophia Wang

13. Bayley Sheinin

14. Emma Charney

15. Audrey Spencer

16. Kinaa Graham

Iva Jovic, the Junior Orange Bowl 14s champion, was planning to play the Winter National 16s, but is not in the draw, so she must have decided another trip to Florida less than a week after she went home to California wasn't necessary after all. Junior Orange Bowl 14s finalist Shannon Lam is entered in the 18s division.

A couple of notable unseeded boys in the 18s: Orange Bowl 16s champion Quang Duong, and Aidan Kim, who is coming off an injury, but is No. 84 in the ITF junior rankings now.

Bill Kallenberg was in Plantation for the Orange Bowl earlier this month for the Tennis Recruiting Network and today they published his photo gallery from the tournament.

Eudice Chong won her second of four NCAA singles titles
at the 2016 Division III NCAA Championships in Kalamazoo

There are only a few ITF World Tennis Tour events this week, and while I haven't been able to follow those results closely for several weeks now, I did want to mention the title won today by four-time NCAA Division III singles champion Eudice Chong at the $15K in Tunisia. Chong, who won her first title as a Wesleyan freshman in 2015 and defended it through her senior year in 2018, is from Hong Kong, where the pandemic was treated very seriously. The resulting inability to travel kept her from competing from March of last year to October of this year, but she has quickly regained her form, going 17-9 this year in $15 and $25Ks. Today's final, Chong, the No. 2 seed, defeated 16-year-old Sofia Costoulas of Belgium, currently No. 20 in the ITF junior rankings, 3-6, 6-4, 7-6(5) in a three-hour battle.

It's the third career ITF World Tennis Tour women's singles title for Chong and her first since 2018. She has 15 doubles titles on the WTT circuit, five of which have come this year.