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Saturday, June 27, 2020

JC Aragone Organizes Pro Exhibition in Miami; Changing of the Guard at Vanderbilt, Blue Chip Anzalotta to Oklahoma State, More College News; ITF Grade 1 in Canada Canceled

Former University of Virginia star JC Aragone has put together another exhibition, this one in Miami, featuring many of the top American men, and it will be broadcast on Tennis Channel for three days beginning Monday.

The event, sponsored by Altec/Styslinger, will feature five ATP Top 100 pros: No. 29 Hubert Hurkacz of Poland, the only international player in the field; No. 39 Reilly Opelka; No. 45 Sam Querrey; No. 55 Tennys Sandgren and No. 63 Steve Johnson. Rounding out the eight-man field are Aragone, Brandon Nakashima and Mackenzie McDonald. Aragone spoke with Tennis Channel's Ted Robinson about how he went about organizing the event in this clip. There's no mention of the format in the clip however. Opelka, Querrey, Sandgren and Johnson are also playing the Atlanta DraftKings All-American Team Cup exhibition, which starts on July 3rd.

Today's buzz around college tennis centered on a posting for the women's head coaching job at Vanderbilt, which has been Geoff Macdonald's position for the past 26 years. Parsa Nemati reported this afternoon that associate head coach Aleke Tsoubanos, who has been at Vanderbilt for 13 years, will be taking over as head coach, but Macdonald will stay on. An official announcement from Vanderbilt is expected Monday.

Blue chip Lauren Anzalotta of Puerto Rico, a recent graduate, has signed with Oklahoma State for this fall. Anzalotta, currently at 66 in the ITF junior rankings, just two points off her career high of 64, has been among the Tennis Recruiting Network's Top 20 in the class of 2020 for the past three years.

Four-star recruit Hailey Stelse will be joining the Air Force Academy this fall.

Abilene Christian graduate Jonathan Sheehy will join Oklahoma as a graduate transfer.

Princeton graduate Payton Holden will join Texas as a graduate transfer.

Texas Tech announced that seniors Jackson Cobb and Bjorn Thomson will not be returning for a fifth season. This information is really appreciated, but not all schools have done this kind of release, meaning that 2020-21 rosters, many not yet out, are going to be the only official information. Bobby Knight of College Tennis Today has been keeping track of these fifth year seniors and graduate transfers, by conference, in this google document.

Parsa Nemati continues to provide updates on signings, many of which have not yet been posted on the schools' athletic website, at his Parsa Bombs (@ParsaBombs) twitter feed. All the latest of these announcements are available here.

The ITF has yet to release its new calendar for August, but when I went took a look today at the list of junior events for that month, I noticed for the first time that the Grade 1 in Repentigny Quebec, the tournament that is the week before the US Open Junior Championships, has been canceled. I'm told that is due to the restrictions that Quebec announced many months ago regarding events through August, and I would imagine that the cancellation has been out there for some time, because the US Open Junior Championships are not showing as canceled, although that was official back on June 17. The ITF Grade 1 in College Park, which I have covered onsite since 2014, is still a possibility according to the latest information I have received.

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