Here are some of the college tennis news stories from the past week:
- Tommy Paul, who was a Georgia commit, decided to sign with Nike and turn pro as was announced by Colette Lewis at ZooTennis. I was hoping Paul would end up at Georgia but with his recent results (2 Futures Titles & French Open Jr Title) and the Nike deal you can’t blame him for choosing the route he did. Only time will tell if the decision turns out to a be a wise one.
- Georgia lost and gained an assistant coach in the last week. Will Glenn stepped down last Friday after 10 years as the assistant coach but today it was announced that former Georgia All-American Bo Hodge was returning to Athens after spending the last 4 years as John Roddick’s assistant at Oklahoma.
- The roster for the USTA Collegiate Team was announced with Wake’s Noah Rubin, UCLA’s Mackenzie McDonald, and UVA’s Ryan Shane named on the men’s side and UCLA’s Jennifer Brady, UVA’s Julia Elbaba, Florida’s Brooke Austin, and UNC’s Jamie Loeb on the women’s side. Both Rubin and Brady have officially left school and turned pro but they met the guidelines which were as follows:
- This year’s team was open to freshmen through seniors who met at least one of the following criteria: NCAA singles champion; highest-ranked American in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association’s final singles rankings; ITA Rookie of the Year; ITA All-American singles champion; USTA/ITA National Indoor Intercollegiate Championships singles champion; pro ranking inside the Top 600 (men) or Top 400 (women) from September through April.
- Dartmouth became the first team that I’ve seen that announced its schedule for next season and it’s a tough one with Penn State, Clemson, Drake, Tulane, Minnesota, St. Johns, NC State, SMU, TCU, Tulsa, and Memphis lined up out of conference along with a tough Ivy League schedule. Dartmouth chose to skip the ITA National Team Indoors Kickoff Weekend and instead lined up home matches with Clemson and Penn State and then during the National Team Indoors they’ll play in New York at the ECAC Championships.
- Iowa announced today that it’ll have 2 more new additions for next season with Robin Haden (UTR 12.66) transferring from Mississippi State and Kareem Allaf (UTR 12.53) coming in from Syria. Iowa had previous announcing the signings of Denmark’s Jonas Larsen (UTR 12.16) and Downers Grove, Illinois native Tony Leto (UTR 11.77). The Hawkeyes had to replace 2 departing seniors (Matt Hagan UTR 13.44 & Andres Estenssoro UTR 11.17) and it appears that Belgium’s Stieg Martens (UTR 12.19) has left the team as well after going 5-12 last year playing in the middle of the lineup.
- Utah announced that it’s new on-campus outdoor courts will open on July 1st. The Utes have had a nice 8 court/1500 seat indoor facility that has been in use since 1989 but they’ve always had to play its outdoor matches at parks and clubs through Salt Lake City due not having any outdoor courts on campus.
- Middle Tennessee State has a brand new 8-court indoor facility that will be opening in August. MTSU also added an $80,000 scoreboard to its outdoor facility thanks to a donation from Mark Tulloch who played tennis at MTSU in the early 80s.
- LSU has a brand new tennis complex that should be ready in the fall. The new complex will have 12 outdoor and 6 indoor courts – here are the most recent construction pics. LSU has not had an indoor facility in the past so this should help them with scheduling out of conference opponents who in the past would have turned them down due the chance of a rain-out.
The blog is nice. Tennis is wonderful game.