Wild Cards, At-Large Bids Complete Field for Next Week's USTA/ITA Indoor Intercollegiate Championships
The Intercollegiate Tennis Association today announced the remaining competitors for the USTA/ITA Indoor Intercollegiate Championships, which begin next Thursday at the USTA Billie Jean King Tennis Center in New York. In addition to players who won their regional championships and those who earned their spots in the draw by their performance in the All-American Championships earlier this month, others receive entry via wild cards and at-large bids.
The men's singles at-large bids (must go to those who reached a regional final):
Greg Andrews, Notre Dame
Brett Clark, North Carolina
Mikelis Libietis, Tennessee
Alex Sarkissian, Pepperdine
Nik Scholtz, Ole Miss
Dane Webb, Oklahoma
The USTA has one men's wild card, which went to Marcos Giron of UCLA. Columbia's host wild card was given to Max Schnur. The ITA gets two men's wild cards and those went to Raymond Sarmiento of Southern Cal and Andrew Harris of Oklahoma. Oklahoma now has four players in the draw, the most of any school. Last year's men's singles champion, Jarmere Jenkins of Virginia, was a wild card.
The men's doubles draw has two at-large bids, which went to Virginia Tech's Andreas Bjerrehus and Amerigo Contini and Texas A&M's Junior Ore and Jackson Withrow. Florida's Gordon Watson and Elliott Orkin received the USTA wild card and Ashok Narayana and Schnur received the host wild card.
The women's entries have slightly different rules. They have ten at-large bids, with six of them going to regional championship finalists and the remaining four selected based on fall results. There is an extra at-large place available this year, with Cristina Stancu of Texas A&M qualifying as both an All-American semifinals and a regional champion. Northwest regional champion Kristie Ahn declined her invitation, with finalist Jenny Jullien of St. Mary's taking her place.
The women's at-large bids:
Emina Bektas, Michigan
Jennifer Brady, UCLA
Alex Cercone, FLorida
Kiah Generette, Baylor
Lorraine Guillermo, Pepperdine
Maho Kowase, Georgia
Sofie Oyen, Florida
Rachel Pierson, Virginia
Nadia Ravita, Kentucky
Zsofi Susanyi, Cal
Abigail Tere-Apisah, Georgia State
The USTA has two wild cards on the women's side, and they went to Sabrina Santamaria of Southern Cal and Hayley Carter of North Carolina. The ITA's wild card was given to Breaunna Addison of Texas.
Columbia's Bianca Sanon received the host wild card.
Santamaria, who has been struggling with an injury this fall, also received the USTA wild card into doubles, which is hardly surprising, as she and Kaitlyn Christian are two-time defending champions. The host wild card went to Sanon and Kanika Vaidya. Defending singles champions Robin Anderson of UCLA qualified for doubles, winning the All-American with Jennifer Brady, but she will not be playing, with Brady and Catherine Harrison, the regional champions, competing instead.
That accounts for one of the extra at-large bids, the other is the result of the Northwest regional champions Taylor Davidson and Ellen Tsay declining their invitation. Since Ahn and Carol Zhao were the finalists, and apparently bowed out too, an extra at-large team was added.
Those teams are:
Stefania Hristov and Cristina Stancu, Texas A&M
Lauren Herring and Maho Kowase, Georgia
Jackie Kasler and Jennifer Pfeifler, Auburn
Brynn Boren and Zoe Katz, Southern Cal
For the complete list of all the competitors and how they received entry, see the ITA website.
4 comments:
Wonder why the Stanford women (Ahn, Tsay, and Davidson) declined their invitations?
That's because Stanford could care less about the indoor season. They are groomed for competing outdoors.
It's not just the Team Indoor anymore, Stanford Women are no longer allowed to play any indoor tennis. Obviously, tongue in cheek. It can't be missed class time, because Gibbs missed multiple weeks of classes last year playing pro events and seemed OK. She even flew to Australia during the winter quarter.
Why would you not want your young players (Ahn is from the area) to come to the National Tennis Center and visit NY?
Donald Young seems to be enjoying himself a lot more on the court both singles and doubles. I wonder if his partnership with Jarmere Jenkins has had something to do with that. Obviously, they've known each other for a while. Jarmere is mentally stable and brings so much positive energy. Just what Donald needs. Donald even gets to play doubles this week in front of a highly partisan crowd that's cheering for him (& Jenkins). Wonder if he has ever felt that kind of support on the tennis court? On the other side, I'm sure it's good for Jenkins to be around someone clearly playing at a high level. It's got to rub off to some degree. It seems like this pairing is good for both guys (in singles & doubles).
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