ITF Junior Davis Cup, Junior Billie Jean King Cup Teams Named; Qualifying Complete, ITA All-American Championships Begin Wednesday in Tulsa and Cary; Cal's Augustus Retires; Stoiana Beats Top Seed At Templeton W75

Today the ITF announced the participants for the Junior Davis Cup and Junior Billie Jean Cup 16U competitions, which will be held November 3-9 in Santiago Chile.  

Kristina Penickova, Julieta Pareja and Tyra Grant
2024 Junior Billie Jean King Cup champions

The teams from the United States, which took both titles last year, look particularly strong, with the three girls competing for the USA Julieta Pareja, Kristina Penickova(both of whom were on last year's championship team) and Annika Penickova. Annika has been out with an injury since Roland Garros, but has entered the upcoming ITF junior circuit events in Texas, so she appears to be ready to return. USTA National Coach Georgi Rumenov is the team captain.

Captain Sylvain Guichard, Teodor Davidov, Jordan Lee
and Michael Antonius, 2024 World Junior Tennis champions

The three boys representing the United States feature two of the players who led the USA to the 14U World Junior Tennis championship last August: Jordan Lee and Michael Antonius. Like Annika Penickova, Lee has been out with an injury, with his hiatus extending back to February, so it's good to see him in a position to begin competing again. US Open boys quarterfinalist Andrew Johnson is the only 16-year-old on Team USA. USTA National Coach Sylvain Guichard is the team captain.

2024 Orange Bowl finalist Moise Koume has been named to the French team. He has not played a junior event since Roland Garros and no other sanctioned tournament since July. I'm surprised to see that Luis Miguel is not on Brazil's team.

The list of the girls representing the 16 countries competing is here; the boys list is here.

The qualifying concluded today for the ITA All-American Championships, with the men beginning play Wednesday morning in Tulsa OK and the women starting their tournament Wednesday morning in Cary NC. 

Because the draws do not designate the qualifiers, here is the list of those who picked up wins Monday and Tuesday to reach the main draw. Four of the women's qualifiers and five of the men's qualifiers have come through pre-qualifying, meaning they have already won five matches just to reach the main draw.

Women through to main draw:

Alyssa Ahn[17], Stanford
Lavinia Tanasie[17], NC State
Emma Kamper, Utah (pre-qualifier)
Salakthip Ounmang[17], Oklahoma
Nao Nishino[5], Ohio State
Prisca Abbas, UNC-Charlotte (pre-qualifier)
Berta Passola Folch, Cal

Audrey Spencer[8], Ohio State

Sofia Rojas[17], Georgia

Monika Ekstrand[17], Stanford

Denis Dilek, Georgia (pre-qualifier)

Reese Miller[17], Michigan

Maria de la Paz Alberto, Iowa State (pre-qualifier)

Gabriella Broadfoot[14], NC State

Leonie Moeller[15], Memphis

Valery Gynina, Florida

Men through to main draw:

Connor Van Schalkwyk[1], Baylor

Luca Pow[17], Wake Forest

Keegan Rice[17], Virginia

Lucas Andrade da Silva[4], South Carolina

Matthew Forbes[5], Michigan State

Jack Anthrop[6], Ohio State

William Manning, NC State (pre-qualifier)

Ioan Alexandru Chirita[17], Baylor

Santiago Giamichelle, Georgia (pre-qualifier)

Duncan Chan[17], TCU

Henry Jefferson, Florida (pre-qualifier)

Dominique Rolland[17], UC-Santa Barbara

Mario Martinez Serrano[17], Mississippi State

Nikita Filin, Ohio State (pre-qualifier)

Jakub Vrba, Arkansas

Eli Stephenson, Kentucky (pre-qualfier)

Columbus Challenger champion Michael Zheng of Columbia withdrew, as did Rafael Jodar of Virginia. Anastasia Lopata of Georgia, who was entered, is injured and withdrew.

Men's All-American Seeds:

1. DK Suresh, Wake Forest

2. Aidan Kim, Ohio State

3. Jay Friend, Arizona

4. Kenta Miyoshi, Illinois

5. Ozan Baris, Michigan State

6. Corey Craig, Florida State

7. Dylan Dietrich, Virginia

8. Sebastian Dominko, Notre Dame

9. Nicolas Kotzen, Columbia

9. Paul Inchauspe, Princeton

9. Benito Sanchez Martinez, Mississippi State

9. Aleksa Krivokapic, Purdue

9. Devin Badenhorst, Baylor

9. Martin Borisiouk, NC State

9. Sebastian Gorzny, Texas

9. Spencer Johnson, UCLA

Women's All-American Seeds:

1. DJ Bennett, Auburn

2. Reese Brantmeier, North Carolina

3. Luciana Perry, Ohio State

4. Valerie Glozman, Stanford

5. Maria Sholokhova, Wisconsin

6. Piper Charney, Michigan

7. Teah Chavez, Ohio State

8. Theadora Rabman, North Carolina

9. Zoe Hammond, Kentucky

9. Julia Garcia Ruiz, Oklahoma

9. Mao Mushika, Cal

9. Mia Kupres, Texas A&M

9. Irina Balus, Duke

9. Catherine Aulia, Tennessee

9. Carmen Herea, Texas

9. Scarlett Nicholson, Georgia Tech

Cracked Racquets will be providing coverage at the ITA YouTube channel, with links to draws, individual streams and live scoring available here for the women, and here for the men.

The University of California-Berkeley announced today that Amanda Augustus, who has led the women's program for 18 seasons, would be retiring, effective immediately. Augustus, who won two NCAA doubles titles at Cal in 1998 and 1999, led the Golden Bears to the NCAA team finals in 2008 and 2009 and won the ITA National Indoor Championships in 2016. 

Men's head coach Kris Kwinta will take over as the interim head coach.

With the recent retirements of Lele Forood at Stanford and Sheila McInerney at Arizona State and now Augustus, there's no denying there's a trend in these departures, which may be partially due to the demise of the Pac-12 conference and the many other changes in collegiate athletics in the past five years. And while everyone retiring has their own reasons and owes the sport nothing more than all that they have already given, college tennis has some very big shoes to fill as these retirements continue.

With so much going on, I'll have to delay the updates on the USTA Pro Circuit tournaments this week in Ann Arbor(M15) and Berkeley(W35), but in today's first round of the W75 in Templeton California, former Texas A&M All-American Mary Stoiana defeated top seed Louisa Chirico 7-5, 6-3. 

Chirico was one of three seeds to lose in first round play today, with No. 6 seed Fiona Crawley(North Carolina) falling to Emina Bektas(Michigan) 6-2, 6-1 and No. 8 seed Valeriya Strakhova of Ukraine dropping a 6-2, 6-0 decision to Haley Giavara(Cal).

Wild cards were given to Salma Ewing(USC, Texas A&M), Jenna Defalco and Katrina Scott. Defalco lost today to Eryn Cayetano(USC) 6-2, 6-4.

Julieta Pareja is playing in her first tournament since the US Open Juniors; she will face No. 7 seed Olivia Gadecki of Australia in the first round Wednesday.