International Spring Championship Wild Cards; Georgia Tech Assistant Pollock Arrested

Qualifying for the ITF Grade 1 International Spring Championships in Carson, California begins Saturday, with main draw matches starting on Monday. The wild cards for the 18s event are as follows:

Girls Main Draw:
Louisa Chrico
Cassandra Vazquez
Jamie Loeb
Sydney Riley
Kimberly Yee
Elizabeth Profit
Alicia Black

Girls Qualifying:
Kiah Generette

Boys Main Draw:
Deiton Baughman
Gage Brymer
Ronnie Schneider
Nikko Madregallejo
Jared Donaldson

Boys Qualifying:
Ernesto Escobedo
Joseph DiGiulio
Philip Antohi
Terrell Celestine
Robbie Bellamy
Justin Butsch

The two special exempts in each draw are not used in Carson, because ITF regulations stipulate they must come from a tournament one grade higher or one grade lower, and there are neither Grade As nor Grade 2s in the North America region this week. But the tournament has in the past reserved a wild card for the Grade 4 Claremont winner should he or she need one, and I believe Sabrina Santamaria received a wild card into Carson in 2010, when she won Claremont.

The wild cards for the 16s can be found at the ISC tournament home page at usta.com, in the acceptance lists. Interesting to see the boys 16s qualifying did not fill, while the girls did, a very unusual circumstance in an ITF tournament. Please also note that Ken Thomas of radiotennis.com will be webcasting from Carson for the first three days.

There is no easy segue into the next story, which is the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's report that the men's assistant coach at Georgia Tech, Conor Pollock, was arrested on Saturday, charged with rape and possession of marijuana and cocaine.

I do not know anything more about the arrest of Pollock, who was an All-American at Texas A&M, other than what appears in this article at ajc.com, and it is always dangerous to speculate in cases like this.

Yet I can't help but recall the case of Chris Doerr, the Mississippi State tennis player who was charged with rape and providing alcohol to a minor in November of 2008. Doerr was exonerated the following January, but there's really no happy ending. For a very detailed look on the incident and how it changed his life, see this February 2009 interview at the Daily Mail.

Again, I do not have any information to suggest these cases are similar, but it does serve as a reminder that arrests are not convictions, and should not be confused.