USTA Announces Summer Collegiate Team; Men's Kick-off Weekend Draft Complete; Ohio State Adds Transfers Li, Kim and Jansen; ITA D-I Regional Awards; Krajicek Endows Scholarship at Texas A&M

The USTA announced the Summer Collegiate Team today, with six American men and six American women chosen for support during competition this summer on the USTA Pro Circuit. With the exception of Perry and Williams, who ended the year as the top-ranked freshmen, and UNC's Fiona Crawley, who had so much success as a member of the team in 2023, these are the Americans with the best ITA season-ending rankings.

Women:
*Fiona Crawley, UNC (Sr.; San Antonio)
Connie Ma, Stanford (Jr.; Dublin, Calif.)
Kari Miller, Michigan (Sr.; Ann Arbor, Mich.)
Alexa Noel, Miami (Jr.; Summit, N.J.)
Luciana Perry, Ohio State (Fr.; Export, Pa.)
*Mary Stoiana, Texas A&M (Jr.; Southbury, Conn.)

Men:
Ozan Baris, Michigan State (Soph.; Okemos, Mich.)
​*Nishesh Basavareddy, Stanford (Soph.; Carmel, Ind.)
Micah Braswell, Texas (Sr.; Sarasota, Fla.)
*Eliot Spizzirri, Texas (Sr.; Greenwich, Conn.)
Cooper Williams, Duke (Fr.; New York)
Michael Zheng, Columbia (Soph.; Montville, N.J.)

​*members of 2023 Summer Collegiate teams

From today's USTA release:

Each of the players was selected based on a number of criteria, including rankings, individual collegiate tournament results or Intercollegiate Tennis Association honors. Players on the team are eligible to receive a grant for travel to USTA Pro Circuit events and coaching support over the summer.

Oklahoma State Assistant Coaches Martin Redlicki and Samantha Crawford will travel with and coach the men and the women, respectively, and will provide assistance to any American collegians playing at tournaments throughout the summer. The program is led by USTA National Coach Maureen Diaz.

“As the level of training and competition in college tennis continues to rise in the U.S. and become an increasingly more important and viable pathway for our best American prospects to mature and develop before they enter the professional ranks, our USTA PD commitment to our top collegians is also strong and comprehensive,” said USTA Player Development GM Martin Blackman. “We commend the ITA for working closely with the ATP and WTA to establish important and powerful linkages for top collegians into professional tennis events. We look forward to seeing this year's Summer Team compete, perform and progress during a robust and exciting summer of great USTA Pro Circuit events throughout the U.S. Congratulations also to the coaches from these great universities for their success in developing these great young players.”

The ITA Men's Kickoff Weekend Draft was held today, with 42 teams selecting which one of the 14 regional host sites where they wish to compete in the January 2025 event. Given the unique nature of the draft, which allows a team to select a regional that it prefers based on competitive or travel considerations, reading the tea leaves is irresistible, although there is no question this is way too early to make a prediction on the strength of a host (or other teams in the region).

The first regional to fill was Tennessee; the last to fill was Columbia, who will host Miami, who at a ranking of 64, was the last team to draft. The last regional to get a No. 2 seed was Ohio State; Tennessee had its regional full before No. 36 Princeton chose Columbus. In addition to Tennessee, Harvard and Mississippi State were popular destinations for top seeds. No. 10 Florida State quickly got its No. 2 and No. 3 seeds in No. 15 South Carolina and No. 19 San Diego, but their fourth seed was one of the last teams to draft: No. 60 UNC-Wilmington.

Six teams passed: Florida Atlantic,  Notre Dame, Utah State, Penn, Clemson and Cal. SMU and Baylor receive direct entry into the 16-team Men's ITA National Team Indoor Championships as co-hosts.

See SLAM tennis for the full regional lineups. The women's draft is Thursday at noon Eastern, with the SLAM tennis page to follow it is here.

The Ohio State men, who lost four of its top six, announced three significant transfers today: rising sophomore Aidan Kim from Florida, rising junior Will Jansen from North Carolina and rising senior Chris Li from Tennessee(previously North Carolina).  With the NCAA no longer involved in the transfer process, signings like these are likely to become an even bigger part of building rosters each summer. 

The ITA announced its Regional Award winners today; the National Award winners will be announced on Thursday. For all the Regional winners, see the ITF pages for men and women. Interesting that Eliot Spizzirri of Texas and Mary Stoiana of Texas A&M, both of whom finished ranked No. 1 in the nation, did not receive any of the Texas Region's awards. I will list all the National winners in my post Thursday.

Former Texas A&M All-American Austin Krajicek, a former ATP World No. 1 in doubles and now ranked No. 14, won the NCAA doubles title in 2011 with Jeff Dadamo and reached the ATP Top 100 in singles before focusing solely on his doubles career. T

The 33-year-old from Florida, who now lives in Texas, was married recently and his wife, the former Misia Kedzierski, who played at Illinois, is a graduate of the Texas A&M Mays business school. Earlier this year, the couple announced an endowment for a marketing scholarship at Mays for students, who like Kedzierski, are not from Texas. As this quote from Misia in the Texas A&M Today article explains, "The scholarship will support out-of-state marketing graduate students because Texas A&M offers such a great college experience. We thought more people from around the country should know about Aggieland and experience its culture like we did while having fun being an Aggie."