North Carolina Claims Historic ITA Women's National Team Indoor Title; Acceptance List for March's J500 Banana Bowl; South Africa's ITF J500 Moves to Egypt in February

photo credit:ITA

North Carolina has dominated the ITA Women's National Team Indoor Championships, reaching nine consecutive finals since 2015 and winning seven titles, all since 2013. With the Tar Heels' 4-0 victory over Georgia in today's final, they have now surpassed even the legendary Stanford program, becoming the first women's team to claim four consecutive Team Indoor titles. 

After getting through a tough first round match against Pepperdine 4-2, second seed North Carolina beat Michigan 4-1 in the quarterfinals and No. 3 seed Texas A&M 4-2 in the semifinals, despite the loss of the doubles point. Today against Georgia, North Carolina won the doubles point, despite falling behind early at lines 1 and 3.  At line 1, Georgia's Mai Nirundorn and Guillermina Grant served for the match against Reese Brantmeier and Elizabeth Scotty at 5-4, but the Tar Heels broke at love, with the match decided in a tiebreaker.

Georgia's Meg Kowalski and Mell Reasco got a late break against Fiona Crawley and Carson Tanguilig at line 2 and held for a 6-4 decision, meaning the Bulldogs needed just one of the two remaining matches. But after trailing 3-1 at line 3, Abby Forbes and Reilly Tran of UNC won five of the next six games to beat Ania Hertel and Anastasiia Lopata 6-4, leaving the tiebreaker at line 1 to decide the doubles point.

The tiebreaker was close throughout, with neither team leading by more than one point. Brantmeier took the initiative at 5-all and with her aggressive play earned a match point at 6-5 on Scotty's serve. A poor lob by Scotty led to a Grant overhead winner, but Scotty held for another match point, and a rare unforced error from Georgia gave the point to North Carolina.

That was as exciting as the match would get, with Georgia dropping first sets quickly at lines 5, 2, and 4. There were a few lineup changes, with Scotty pulled from line 5, moving Anika Yarlagadda there and Reilly Tran to line 6. Kowalski and Reasco were at 5 and 3, after trading the 3 and 4 spots earlier, with Hertel moving up from 5, where she had played all weekend. But none of those switches had any noticeable impact, with North Carolina getting five first sets in singles.

The only first set Georgia posted came from Grant at line 6, but Tran dug in during the second set as her teammates moved closer to the finish. Yarlagadda beat Kowalski 6-1, 6-2 to make it 2-0 North Carolina, and any push Georgia might have envisioned failed to materlize, with North Carolina having big leads in the second sets at lines 3 and 4. Tanguilig, who had clinched the win over Texas A&M in a third-set tiebreaker Sunday, beat Reasco 7-5, 6-0 at line 3 and graduate transfer Abby Forbes clinched the championship almost immediately thereafter with a 6-4, 6-1 win over Hertel at line 4.

North Carolina's fourth consecutive title broke their tie with the Stanford teams of 2004, 2005 and 2006; one men's program, Virginia, captured four straight from 2008 to 2011.

With the women's Division I Team Indoor Championships complete, attention now turns to the men's event, which begins Friday in Chicago. There are still a couple of big men's matches this week prior to Friday's tournament, with No. 4 Michigan beating No. 6 seed Southern California 4-1 tonight in Ann Arbor and No. 10 Baylor traveling to Columbus to take on No. 1 Ohio State tomorrow. See CollegeTennisRanks.com for this week's upcoming men's and women's matches, including live scoring and streaming links.

The acceptances for next month's ITF J500 in Criciuma Brazil came out last week, with eight US boys and six US girls currently in the main draw. The boys are Alexander Razeghi, Roy Horovitz, Alex Frusina, Darwin Blanch, Adhithya Ganesan, Quang Duong, Cooper Woestendick and Max Exsted. The girls are Kaitlin Quevedo, Qavia Lopez, Ashton Bowers, Ava Krug, Alexia Harmon and Sage Loudon. With the tournament scheduled the week before the new ITF J300 the second week of the BNP Paribas Open Indian Wells, I'm not surprised to see quite a few of the top US juniors who played the last three weeks in Central and South America taking a pass on the clay events in Brazil.

Although the withdrawal deadline isn't until next week, Australian Open champion Alina Korneeva of Russia is entered, as is Sara Saito of Japan, both ITF Top 10 players. There are no Top 10 boys entered, but the field does include Yaroslav Demin of Russia, Joao Fonseca of Brazil and Rei Sakamoto of Japan.

The ITF has announced the players it is sponsoring on an upcoming three-week South American trip via its Grand Slam Player Development Programme: Matej Dodig (CRO), Adriano Dzhenev (BUL) Roh Hoyoung (KOR), Onyu Choi (KOR), Madeleine Jessup (TPE), Tania Andrade Sabando (ECU), Malwina Rowinska (POL).

When I was checking the ITF Junior calendar recently, I noticed a J500 in Cairo Egypt, which begins next Monday. I hadn't heard a new J500 was being introduced this year, so it took me a minute to figure out that it's the event launched in 2019, which has been held previously in South Africa in the late summer or fall. 

The only American in the acceptances is Alexander Frusina. Australian Open girls finalist Mirra Andreeva is entered in the girls draw.