My Kalamazoo Preview; Three Seeds Fall in 18s First Round Action at Kalamazoo; All Top Eight Doubles Seeds Advance to Third Round; USTA 12s and 14s Nationals Seeds; USA Teams Fall in WJT 14U Semis; Stearns Reaches Lexington $60K Semifinals

©Colette Lewis 2022--

Kalamazoo MI--

Before I get into the action on opening day of the 2022 USTA Boys 18s and 16s National Championships, here's my annual preview of the tournament for the Tennis Recruiting Network. The first day is strictly for 18s and due to byes, none of the top 32 seeds play  singles, so, with one exception, all the players I mention in my preview are still in contention for the titles. The exception is No. 6 seed Nishesh Basavareddy, who withdrew with an injury late Thursday. 

Good weather is always appreciated when there are so many matches to complete early in the tournament, but there was a delay this afternoon at all three sites due to rain, lightning or both. All the singles matches had concluded before the rain arrived, however, so the only impact was in doubles matches, but that forced several second round matches under the lights.

While the top 32 seeds get byes, all 32 of the 33-64 seeds were in action today, with only three failing to advance to the second round. Three others withdrew before the start of play: Luke Bracks, Adam Sun and Brayden Michna.  

Ohio State recruit Brandon Carpico defeated Kentucky recruit Eli Stephenson[33] 7-5, 2-6, 6-2; Adam Bojkovic took out Yale incoming freshman Vignesh Gogineni[33] and Purdue incoming freshman Mujtaba Ali-Khan defeated Dartmouth incoming freshman Waleed Qadir[33] 6-3, 2-6, 7-6(6). 

18s played two rounds of doubles today, with the top 16 seeds getting byes. The top eight seeds all won, with No. 1 seeds Sebastian Gorzny and Alex Michelsen getting a 6-1, 6-3 victory over Robert Cooper and Luc Piacentini and No. 2 seeds Nicholas Godsick and Ethan Quinn defeating Payton Jim On and Andre Ajed 6-2, 6-2.  No. 4 seeds Samir Banerjee and Ozan (Colak) Baris had the most dramatic second round win of the top eight seeds, defeating Stephenson and David Saye 6-1, 6-7(4), 10-7.  

With Basavareddy withdrawing, Bryce Nakashima was without a partner, but this morning he was able to get USC rising sophomore Ryan Colby as a replacement. They retained the No. 6 seed originally given to the Basavareddy and Nakashima (CORRECTION: Colby and Nakashima are NOT seeded), and after a slow start, came back to beat Rahulniket Konakanchi and Nicolas Arts 3-6, 6-1, 10-6.

The top 32 seeds in the 18s will begin play Saturday with second round matches, while the first round of 16s singles will be played, with those top 32 seeds having byes. There will be one round of doubles for 16s on Saturday, while the 18s doubles have the day off. 

Live streaming is available on courts 1-5 at Stowe Stadium. Follow @ustaboys on twitter for information on who is playing on which of those five courts.

The 12s and 14s divisions begin play Saturday, with the Top 16 seeds listed below. For complete draws, click on the headings to go to the PlayTennis site.

B12s Top 16 seeds

1. Vihaan Reddy

2. Elliott Awomoyi

3. Safir Azam

4. Akshay Mirmira

5. Tabb Tuck

6. Tristan Stratton

7. Gurbaaz Narang

8. Griffin Goode

9. Arjun Krishnan

10. Jason Eigbedion

11. Zesen Wang

12. Dylan Meineke

13. Karan Shanker 

14. Advay Singh

15. Daniil Berezin

16. Stefanos Constantinides

B14s Top 16 seeds

1. Jack Secord

2. Lev Seidman

3. Andrew Gordon

4. Andre Alcantara

5. Liam Alvarez

6. David Wu

7. Sebastian Bielen

8. Colin McPeek

9. Rafael Ferreira

10. Rajat Shirur

11. Ilias Bouzoubaa

12. James Quattro

13. Zavier Augustin

14. Arjun Prabhakar

15. Sean Grosman

16. Kimi Basamakov

G12s Top 16 seeds

1. Sarah Ye

2. Hannah Ayrault

3. Welles Newman

4. Maggie Sohns

5. Sophia Osipova

6. Lani Chang

7. Janae Preston

8. Ciara Sergi

9. Julia Seversen

10. Reiley Rhodes

11. Evelynn Kwak

12. Bella Arwood

13. Daniela Del Mastro

14. Raya Kotseva

15. Ava Penn

16. Ava Khalil

G14s Top 16 seeds

1. Nicole Okhtenberg

2. Anita Tu

3. Isabelle DeLuccia

4. Alyson Shannon

6. Lauren Kettlewell

7. Sena Yoon

8. Anna Frey

9. Karlin Schock

10. Thea Frodin

11. Victoria Mann

12. Nancy Lee

13. Kaia Giribalan

14. Natalie Oliver

15. Abigail Gordon

16. Anna Bugaienko

Both teams from the USA lost in the semifinals today at the ITF World Junior Tennis 14U team competition in the Czech Republic. Both Capucine Jauffret and Shannon Lam fell in singles, with No. 4 seed Germany taking a 2-0 victory over the No. 2 seeds. The No. 3 boys seeds lost to unseeded Switzerland 2-1, with Jack Kennedy winning at No. 2 singles, Carel Ngounoue losing at No. 1 singles and Keaton Hance and Kennedy falling in a match tiebreaker in the deciding doubles. The girls will play Slovakia[3] for third place, while the boys will face Kazakhstan[8] in the bronze medal match.

Germany will play top seed Czech Republic for the girls title, with Switzerland taking on No. 2 seed Germany for the boys title. For more on today's matches, see the ITF junior website.

Live streaming and live scoring is available here.

2022 NCAA singles champion Peyton Stearns(Texas) is through to the semifinals at the $60,000 USTA women's Pro Circuit tournament in Lexington Kentucky after beating Karman Thandi of India 6-3, 6-1. Stearns, a qualifier this week, will face No. 2 seed Jodi Burrage of Great Britain Saturday.

At the ATP Challenger 80 in Lexington, No. 7 seed Aleks Kovacevic(Illinois) has advanced to the semifinals with a 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 win over Roberto Quiroz(USC) of Ecuador. Kovacevic, a finalist two weeks ago at the Indianapolis Challenger, will face 17-year-old Jerry Shang of China, who took out top seed Roman Safiullin of Russia 0-6, 6-4, 7-5 today.