Bigun Defeats Sakamoto in Sumter Challenger 125; TRN's 12s Nationals Coverage; Brown, Yli-Piipari Claim ITA Summer Championships; ITA Announces D-I Rankings Changes; McKenna Leaves Wisconsin for SMU

The first round of the new ATP Challenger 125 in Sumter SC featured a match between two of the four 2024 junior slam champions, with Roland Garros winner Kaylan Bigun taking on Australian Open winner Rei Sakamoto of Japan.  The 19-year-old Sakamoto, who has won two Challenger titles in the past eight months, is at 200 in the ATP rankings, while Bigun, who played a semester at UCLA this spring but is not returning to college, is at 807. But there was no evidence of that gap today, with wild card Bigun breezing past Sakamoto 6-1, 6-3 to set up a second round meeting with No. 9 seed Jaime Faria of Portugal. 

Kalamazoo 18s champion Darwin Blanch, a wild card, is on Wednesday schedule, facing former Arizona State All-American Murphy Cassone.

The four qualifiers were decided today:  Jake Fearnley(TCU) of Great Britain, Borna Gojo(Wake Forest) of Croatia, Martin Damm and Ryan Seggerman(Princeton, UNC). They will all play their first round matches Wednesday. Strong Kirchheimer (Northwestern) reached the main draw as a lucky loser.

The Tennis Recruiting Network's coverage of the USTA National 12s Championships was published today, with an article from Mobile on Keita Iida's title and an article from Peachtree Corners on the sweep of the titles for Anna Victoria Sandru. Both 14s recaps will be posted on Wednesday, with the 16s and 18s articles set for Thursday and Friday.

The ITA Summer Championships concluded today at the Leftwich Tennis Center in Memphis, with Lucas Brown of Texas and Saray Yli-Piipari of of Tennessee winning the singles titles, and wild cards into next month's ITA All-American Championships.  Yli-Piipari also won the doubles titles, with teammate Vanesa Suarez, with that title also providing an All-American Championships' main draw wild card.

For more on the Tennessee women's titles, see this article from utsports.com.  For more on Brown's title, see this article from texaslonghorns.com.

ITA Summer Championships finals results:

Saray Yli-Piipari[3](Tennessee) d. Sophia Holod[5](Notre Dame) 6-2, 5-7, 10-4

Saray Yli-Piipari and Vanesa Suarez[1](Tennessee) d. Erica Jessel and Maia Loueiro(Northwestern) 6-1, 6-1 

Lucas Brown[1](Texas) d. Moritz Kudernatsch[3](Memphis) 6-2, 6-4

Luis Jose Nakamine and Luc Koenig[1](Baylor) d. Martin Vergara(East Tennessee State) and Cody Benton[2](NC State) 6-3, 3-6, 10-6

At the beginning of this month, the ITA announced a change to its ranking procedures in Division I, with the most significant change being no coaches poll to start the season, and all teams and players starting each rankings run unranked. The algorithm will be run an undetermined amount of times until it cycles, and an averaged points in the cycle will result in the rankings.

A more detailed explanation of why the ranking procedure was changed, why the original algorithm was retained and the fate of the coaches polls, among other topics, is available here.

SMU announced Monday that Kelcy McKenna, the women's head coach at the University of Wisconsin, would be taking over their program, after the contract of Jeff Nevolo was not renewed last month. McKenna, a former All-American at Arizona State, took the Wisconsin head coaching position in 2017 and built that program into a consistent NCAA participant, with a record of 58-21 in the past three seasons.