Virginia's Collins and Kwiatkowski Top Seeds at National Indoors; Petition to Save UMBC Tennis; Ponwith Commits to Georgia; Kypson Earns First ATP Point

The draws have been released for the USTA/ITA Indoor Intercollegiate Championships, which begin tomorrow morning at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York.

ITA All-American tournament champions Danielle Collins and Thai Kwiatkowski, both from the University of Virginia, were named the top seeds.  Collins will begin her quest for a second straight fall major against Oklahoma State's Katarina Adamovic at 9 a.m., with Kwiatkowski facing Benjamin Lock of Florida State at 11 a.m.

The women's seeds:
1. Danielle Collins, Virginia
2. Maegan Manasse, Cal
3. Hayley Carter, North Carolina
4. Ellen Perez, Georgia
5. Sinead Lohan, Miami
6. Julia Elbaba, Virginia
7. Belinda Woolcock, Florida
8. Stephanie Wagner, Miami

Elbaba is the defending champion.

The men's seeds:
1. Thai Kwiatkowski, Virginia
2. Cameron Norris, TCU
3. Dominik Koepfer, Tulane
4. Arthur Rinderknech, Texas A&M
5. Hugo Di Feo, Ohio State
6. Roberto Cid, South Florida
7. Nicolas Alvarez, Duke
8. Jared Hiltzik, Illinois

Brayden Schnur of North Carolina won the title last year, but he has not played any collegiate events this fall.

As with the singles, the All-American champions were also given the top seeds in doubles. Manasse and Denise Starr of Cal are the top seeds in the women's doubles, with Kwiatkowski and Mac Styslinger No. 1 in the men's doubles.

The ESPN streaming coverage of the tournament doesn't begin until Saturday's semifinals, but the live blog and the radiotennis.com coverage will be available from beginning to end. See the ITA's tournament page for complete draws and links to those sites, as well as the live scoring.

Coverage is also available at Bobby Knight's College Tennis Today. He has compiled the Universal Tennis Ratings for both the men's and women's singles field.

A campaign to save the University of Maryland-Baltimore County tennis teams has been launched and an online petition has been created to assist in getting support.  They are close to their goal of 1000 signatures, so please consider taking a few seconds to sign it.

The University of Georgia announced today on twitter that Nathan Ponwith, No. 1 in the Tennis Recuiting Network's 2016 class, has committed to the Bulldogs.  When I spoke to Ponwith about his plans for college at Wimbledon, he said he had not yet begun to explore his options, but I'm sure the past few months were a whirlwind of phone calls and visits for the 17-year-old from Scottsdale.  Georgia had already received verbal commitments from blue chips Robert Loeb and Alex Phillips, as well as five-star Alex Diaz.

Several other blue chips announced their decisions today, the first day of the National Signing Week, at the Tennis Recruiting Network.  Kenya Jones has chosen Georgia Tech, Hady Habib has selected Texas A&M and Emma Higuchi has committed to Stanford.

Kalamazoo 16s champion Patrick Kypson, who turned 16 two weeks ago, earned his first ATP point at this week's $10,000 Futures in Niceville, Florida. Kypson, playing in his first USTA Pro Circuit event, won four qualifying matches to earn his opportunity in the main draw. He defeated former Georgia standout Nathan Pasha 4-6, 7-5, 6-2.  TCU recruit Alex Rybakov also advanced to the second round, as did defending champion Wil Spencer, the No. 4 seed. Spencer defeated 16-year-old qualifier Denis Shapovalov of Canada, the US Open boys doubles champion, 6-1, 6-1. Shapovalov has reached the semifinals of the doubles competition in Niceville, partnering Brandon Holt, who he defeated in the US Open boys doubles final.