My Wimbledon Junior Championships Recap; USTA National Hard Courts Wild Cards; Qualifying Concludes at USTA Pro Circuit Events in Dallas, Champaign

I hope you had an opportunity to read my daily coverage of the Junior Championships at Wimbledon here, but if you didn't, I've summarized the historic titles for Renata Jamrichova of Slovakia and Nicolai Budkov Kjaer of Norway in this article for the Tennis Recruiting Network. Also featured are American doubles champions Iva Jovic, Tyra Grant and Alex Razeghi, whose titles made it five straight years that the United States has had Wimbledon junior champions.

Those three Americans will be among the contenders at the USTA National Championships next month in San Diego and Kalamazoo, which now have their full 192-player fields, following the selection of the wild cards, listed below.

USTA National Championships Wild Cards

Boys 18s:
Krish Arora
Meecah Bigun
Joseph Oyebog Jr
Jordan Reznik
Evan Sharygin
Abhishek Thorat

Girls 18s:

Ashton Bowers

Alex Ackman

Sydney Jara

Sophie Llewellyn

Anya Murthy

Mia Yamakita

Boys 16s:

Jerrid Gaines Jr.

Keaton Hance

Marcel Latak

Ford McCollum

Navneet Raghuram

Vihaan Reddy

Girls 16s:

Hannah Ayrault

Maria Aytoyan

Chukwumelije Clarke

Zaire Clarke

Ariana Ikwueme

Nicole Okhtenberg

Boys 14s:

Elliott Awomoyi

Diego Custodio

Luke Jones

Daniel Malacek

Girls 14s:

Adelina Iftime

Addyson Munroe

Boys 12s:

Reynold Griffin

Oliver Rottcher

Girls 12s:

Cathryn Chartrand

McClellan Cooley

The USTA Girls Nationals in San Diego put out a press release today on the return of defending champion Clervie Ngounoue this year, who is warming up for the August 4th start date for 18s this week at the USTA Pro Circuit W50 in Dallas.

Ngounoue was the top seed in qualifying and she advanced to the main draw with a 7-5, 6-3 win over Jada Robinson today.  She will face 2015 NCAA singles champion Jamie Loeb(North Carolina) in the first round Wednesday.

Other Americans qualifying are wild card Bridget Stammel(Vanderbilt), wild card Alexis Blokhina(Stanford), Sara Daavettila(North Carolina) and Dalayana Hewitt.

Two of last week's W75 finalists received special exempt entries: Mary Stoiana(Texas A&M) and Kayla Cross. Kari Miller(Michigan) used one of her ITA/ITF Accelerator entries and there were four wild cards awarded: Drew Morris, SMU rising senior; Emma Charney, USC rising junior; Katrina Scott and Kimmi Hance, UCLA rising senior. Only two first round matches were played today at the rare summer event on indoor hard courts, with Scott beating Charney and Robin Anderson(UCLA) defeating Sahaja Yamalapalli(Sam Houston State). Kayla Day is the top seed; the only other junior in the draw is Akasha Urhobo.

At the USTA Pro Circuit men's $25,000 tournament in Champaign Illinois, two of the eight qualifiers are Fighting Illini, giving that program seven of the 32 players in the draw: qualifiers Lucas Horve(recent graduate) and Gabrielius Guzauskas(rising senior), Zeke Clark(assistant coach), wild cards Alex Petrov(recent graduate), William Mroz(rising senior) and Kenta Miyoshi(rising junior) of Japan and Karlis Ozolins(rising senior) of Latvia.

The fourth wild card went to Arizona rising senior Colton Smith, with Rochester $15K champion Alex Bernard(Ohio State) and Rochester finalist Tyler Zink(Georgia, Oklahoma State) getting special exempt spots. 

Seven of the eight qualifiers are Americans, with Canadian Cleeve Harper(Texas) the exception; in addition to Guzauskas and Horve, US qualifiers are Aidan Kim(Florida, Ohio State), Kyle Kang(Stanford), Connor Bruce(Dayton), Gavin Young(Michigan) and Adhithya Ganesan(Florida). 

Ganesan is the only player competing in Champaign that is expected in Kalamazoo for the tournament's August 2 start.

The first round of the ATP Challenger 75 in Chicago is nearly complete, with lightning delaying the final match between top seed Terence Atmane of France and Micah Braswell(Texas) with Atmane leading 7-6(4), 1-2.

Among those advancing to the second round are qualifiers Jake Fearnley(TCU) of Great Britain and Aidan Mayo, with the latter facing wild card Learner Tien Wednesday; Brandon Holt(USC); wild card Nishesh Basavareddy and 2019 NCAA singles champion Paul Jubb of Great Britain.