Zootennis


Schedule a training visit to the prestigious Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, MD by clicking on the banner above

Saturday, March 6, 2021

National Level 1 Spring Championships Underway; USTA Sends Apology Email; San Diego ITF Grade 1 Acceptances; Liu and Lao Reach Newport Beach $25K Final


The USTA Spring Individual Championships, Level 1 National tournaments being held in two locations, began today and are schedule to conclude on Tuesday. The 14s, 16s and 18s are taking place in Mobile Alabama and the 12s are being held in Rome Georgia.

Below are the top eight seeds for each division, and if they are no longer in the main draw after today's matches, I've struck through the name.

B18s
1. Nicholas Heng
2. Waleed Qadir
3. Grant Lothringer
4. Sebastian Gorzny
5. Gavin Young
6. Colton Smith
7. Bjorn Swenson
8. Alex Cairo

B16s
1. Marko Mesarovic
2. Emil Grantcharov
3. Stephan Gershfeld
4. Jason Shuler
5. Greyson Casey
6. Carson Baker
7. Connor Smillie
8. Nikita Filin

B14s
1. Cooper Woestendick
2. Nicholas Patrick
3. Braeden Gelletich
4. A Filer
5. Calvin Baierl
6. Nicolas Iantosca
7. Andrew Ena
8. Jimin Jung

B12s
1. withdrew
2. Yannik Alvarez
3. Drew Hassenbein
4. Colin McPeek
5. Jack Secord
6. Liam Alvarez
7. Trenton Kanchanakomtorn
8. Ryan Cozad

G18s
1. Elisabeth Jones
2. Ariana Pursoo
3. Bridget Stammel
4. Emma Staker
5. Eleana Yu
6. Kaitlyn Carnicella
7. Meera Jesudason
8. Kathryn Treiber

G16s
1. Piper Charey
2. Natalie Block
3. Mika Ikemori
4. Kate Kim
5. Vivian Miller
6. Arina Oreshchenkova
7. Kavya Karra
8. Yichen Zhao

G14s
1. Amber Yin
2. Christasha McNeil
3. Aspen Schuman
4. Emily Baek
5. Sydney Jara
6. Kayla Chung
7. Claire An
8. Elena Zhao

G12s
1. Nicole Okhtenberg
2. Kayla Moore
3. Isabelle DeLuccia
4. Anita Tu
5. Meghan Rowley
6. Nancy Lee
7. Ellery Mendell
8. Sena Yoon

Both tournaments have moved from the new USTA tournament software back to TennisLink, which are the links I've given above, and where I've gotten the information posted above. As a USTA member, I received this email from the USTA yesterday addressing all the issues that have made that move back to TennisLink necessary.  Contained in the email is this:
However, as we introduced the new platform, the resulting functionality was not ready. We were not fully prepared for the challenges with the historical data housed in TennisLink, and that has led to complexities in the transfer and migration of information and data from the various events, formats, and regions into one centralized system. A number of issues resulted, and we recognize that this has adversely affected players, tournament directors and providers throughout the country.

Over the past two months, we have worked diligently to fix and address issues with the goal to deliver correct information surrounding National Standings Lists. We have put into place, and continue to work through, an extensive audit of the rankings information, and have requested feedback from users to help us identify bugs and areas of concern, so as to increase accuracy. In addition, we have had extensive dialogue with Tournament Directors and have undergone intensive revisions on the back-end of the system to better enable the running of tournaments and events.

The acceptances for the ITF Grade 1 in San Diego, formerly the International Spring Championships in Carson, now known as the International Open of Southern California, were posted earlier this week, with many players who competed on the just concluded South American circuit coming to California for this event.

The top three entries in the boys draw are Bruno Kuzuhara, Juncheng Shang of China, and Dali Blanch. The top three entries in the girls draw are Madison Sieg, Alexandra Yepifanova and Elvina Kalieva.

The ranking cutoff for boys in the 48 draw was 133; for girls it was 174.

Claire Liu has reached the final of back-to-back $25,000 tournaments after a marathon victory today over qualifier Beatriz Haddad Maia of Brazil. The 20-year-old Southern Californian, seeded No. 5, defeated Haddad Maia 6-3, 2-6, 7-6(4) in three hours and 16 minutes in today's Newport Beach California semifinals. 

Liu will play No. 7 seed Danielle Lao, who defeated unseeded Conny Perrin 3-6, 6-4, 6-1. Lao, a former USC star, is playing in just her second event of the year, after falling in the first round of Australian Open qualifying in January.

No. 4 seeds Vania King and Maegan Manasse(Cal) won the doubles title in Newport Beach with two victories on Saturday. In the final, King and Manasse, who is currently the volunteer assistant for the USC women's team, defeated Emina Bektas and Great Britain's Tara Moore 6-4, 6-2.

3 comments:

Lisa Stone said...

For your readers who are on Twitter, please use #ustarankings when tweeting about issues or concerns with the new USTA tournament and ranking platform. Really hoping USTA is paying attention and will fix this mess soon. Players are not able to get into events because their rankings are incorrect which also leads to seeding errors. I feel for all the families and tourney directors impacted.

Ridiculous rankings said...

The USTA should have phased in the rankings. If they would have started with the 12s and 14s, they would have had time to manage all of the tremendous errors. The new rankings are ridiculous. In the Southern Section, we have ended up with number 1 seeds in tournaments where the person finished 2020 well outside of the top 100 in the section and then players in the top 40 aren't seeded. The USTA national office should have realized their error and moved back to the old system for the kids that are trying to get recruited now.

Even the L1 in Mobile has the seeding messed up. Not only that, but it impacted who actually got into the tournament.

The National office had a year to be testing this in the background but did not appear to try to validate their results against the existing sectional rankings to see if they made sense

USTA is CORRUPT said...

USTA National Junior Rankings LOCKING OUT SOCAL KIDS from National Tournaments. The USTA Could just use the old system UTR rating for the nat. Tny selections and seedings until they fix their new system.
INSTEAD the #2 12/u boy in usa..utr 9.5 From socal Ford McCollum wasnt even auto selected for the EASTER BOWL And willnot be seeded if selected as a wildcard.
DOZENS OF SOCAL PLAYERS are being left OUT of every National L1 toL3 Tournament Every Week.
SOMEBODY PLEASE PRESSURE THE USTA ON SOCIAL MEDIA. THIS ISBEYOND NEGLIGENCE..IT IS PURE CORRUPTION!!!