Tien and Zheng Advance to Second Round Meeting at Edwardsville $25K; Three Collegiate Qualifiers Reach Round of 16 at Dallas $60K; Virginia Tech Assistant Coach Sayer Dies; Andy Jackson Among Recent D-I Coaching Hires

Seventeen-year-old Learner Tien and 19-year-old Michael Zheng won their first round matches today at the $25,000 USTA Pro Circuit tournament in Edwardsville Illinois to set up a meeting Thursday for a spot in the quarterfinals.

Tien defeated qualifier Ishaan Ravichander, a rising senior at Columbia, 6-3 6-3; No. 7 seed Zheng, a rising sophomore at Columbia, fought back to beat wild card Hunter Heck(Illinois) 4-6, 6-4, 6-2. Zheng and Tien haven't played on the Pro Circuit, but Tien is 2-0 in their head-to-head in ITF Junior Circuit competition, both coming last year at the two Southern California J300s.

Wimbledon semifinalist Cooper Williams defeated No. 8 seed Makoto Ochi of Japan 7-6(2), 1-6, 7-5 to advance to a meeting with qualifier Quinn Vandecasteele(Oregon), who beat Blu Baker of Great Britain 6-4, 5-7, 7-6(4).

At the women's $60,000 tournament in Dallas, qualifiers Chloe Beck(Duke), Mary Stoiana(Texas A&M), Mccartney Kessler(Florida) and wild card Hadley Doyle(SMU) all advanced to the second round.

Doyle defeated lucky loser Grace Min 6-4, 6-2; Kessler beat qualifier Allie Kiick 7-6(5), 6-1; Stoiana downed Ashley Lahey(Pepperdine) 6-1, 7-6(1) and Beck defeated Robin Anderson(UCLA) 6-2, 6-2. Beck, Kessler and Stoiana now play the top three seeds: Madison Brengle, Yafan Wang of China, and Ann Li, respectively.

Sad news today in the Division I coaching ranks, with the death of Virginia Tech men's assistant coach Martin Sayer, just 36 years old.  Sayer, who was an ITF Top 25 junior, competing for Hong Kong, played his collegiate tennis at Radford, and coached there before joining Virginia Tech in 2016. For more on Sayer's accomplishments while at Virginia Tech, see today's release from the university.

While the University of Michigan's men's head coaching position has yet to be filled, there aren't any other high profile jobs still vacant, so it's a good time to catch up on the changes in the past month or so.

I totally missed the announcement in May that the University of Minnesota had hired Lois Arterberry to take over the women's head coaching position from Catrina Thompson, who had been the coach there for six years. Arterberry coached previously at St. Thomas, which moved from Division III to Division I while she was there.

Iowa State, which had a mass exodus via the transfer portal after Boomer Saia left for Clemson, hired Jaron Maestas late last month for its women's head coaching position. Maestas, who has just one player on the current roster for 2023-24, has announced the addition of two other top recruits in the past month. He was previously associate head coach at the University of Kansas.

Last week, the University of Nebraska announced the hiring of German Dalmagro to lead its women's program. Dalmagro, who was head coach at Arkansas State for one year after serving as associate head coach at Nebraska under the recently retired Scott Jacobson from 2014-2018 and was in the same position at the University of Illinois from 2019-2022

In non-Power Five coaching news, Justin DeSanto, most recently head coach at Alabama Birmingham, has been named to the men's head coaching position at Dartmouth.

And Andy Jackson, who has been the head coach at Mississippi State, Florida, and most recently, Arkansas, was recently named the men's head coach at UNLV after the contract of Owen Hambrook, head coach since 2004, was not renewed.