All Four USA Teams Advance to ITF Junior Team Finals; Bonding and Stojsavljevic Win British 18s National Titles; Nava's Streak Continues in Tallahassee; UTEP Cuts Women's Tennis

The United States and Canada are traditionally the countries that emerge from North and Central American and the Caribbean qualifying for the ITF Junior Davis Cup, Junior Billie Jean King Cup and World Junior Tennis team events.

That trend continues this year, with the United States finishing first in three of the four competitions, Canada in the other and the two countries finishing 1-2 in all four to qualify for the world championships in the Czech Republic in August and Chile in November.

In World Junior Tennis competition, which is for players 14-and-under, the United States finished at the top of the standings for both boys and girls, with 3-0 records in the three-day qualifying tournament. The boys team of Tristan Ascenzo, Indra Vergne and Alex Anderson beat Mexico 3-0 today to top the standings, dropping just one point in their wins over the Dominican Republic, Canada and Mexico.

The girls team of Emery Combs, Caroline Shao and Olivia de los Reyes didn't lose a point (Shao was shown as losing to her Canadian opponent in singles yesterday, but that has been corrected to a win for her) in their wins over Mexico, Canada and the Dominican Republic.  They are among the 16 teams who will play in the Czech Republic in August, as will both second-place teams from Canada.

Like the WJT girls, the Junior Davis Cup boys did not drop a set in their three wins, with Michael Antonius, Vihaan Reddy and Andy Johnson getting shutouts of Canada, Guatemala and today, Mexico to advance to the 16-team finals in Chile in November.

Canada finished atop the Junior Billie Jean King Cup standings after their surprise 2-1 win over the United States on Thursday. The USA team of Annika and Kristina Penickova and Maggie Sohns beat Puerto Rico 3-0 today to finish second, qualifying for the competition in Chile in November.

Results from all matches can be found at the ITF tournament website.

The LTA National 18s champions were crowned today in London, with top seeds Oliver Bonding and Mika Stojsavljevic winning the titles. 

Bonding, the defending champion, beat No. 2 seed Benjamin Gusic-Wan 6-2, 6-3, while Stojsavljevic, the reigning US Open girls champion, came from behind to beat No. 2 seed Hannah Klugman 3-6, 6-2, 7-5.  Both will receive qualifying wild cards into the Wimbledon Championships.

For more on the finals, with comments from the winners and LTA national coaches, see this LTA article.

Emilio Nava will lose again some day but not today, with the 23-year-old American advancing to his fifth consecutive ATP Challenger semifinal with a 6-2, 6-3 win over Murphy Cassone(Arizona State) at the ATP Challenger 75 in Tallahassee Florida. No. 6 seed Nava, who has won the past three ATP Challengers he's played and has won 32 consecutive sets in that span, will play the winner of tonight's match between No. 3 seed Mitchell Krueger and unseeded Mathys Erhard of France. 

In the bottom half semifinal, former Virginia All-American Chris Rodesch of Luxembourg will face Andrea Collarini of Argentina, with both players unseeded.

At the women's USTA Pro Circuit W50 in Zephyrhills Florida, Caty McNally is through to the semifinals after defeating top seed Arina Rodionova of Australia 6-2, 6-1 today.  McNally, who is very much in the running for the USTA's Roland Garros wild card, starting this week tied for 2nd behind Julieta Pareja, plays unseeded Elvina Kalieva in Saturday's semifinals. Kalieva had beaten No. 3 seed and last week's W35 Boca Raton champion Whitney Osuigwe in the second round. The other semifinal features unseeded Katherine Sebov of Canada and No. 2 seed Iryna Shymanovich of Belarus.

The University of Texas El Paso, which competes in Conference USA, announced today that it was discontinuing its women's tennis program, effective immediately.

From the announcement:

UTEP does not have an on-campus tennis facility. Building a viable tennis facility would be cost prohibitive, and a more extensive donor base would be required to raise sufficient funding. Discontinuing tennis will enable the reallocation of resources to other sports programs as UTEP prepares for upcoming changes to college athletics, including revenue sharing and roster caps.

Whether this is an outlier or a harbinger of things to come for mid-major programs remains to be seen, but this is not good news in either case.