It took about a month but Monmouth Athletic Director Marilyn McNeil announced the hiring of Alex Kasarov as the Hawks new men’s head coach. Kasarov was the men’s assistant coach at Davidson for the last two season and replaces Kyle Bailey who departed after a few months to become the new men’s assistant at South Carolina.
Hofstra Director of Atheltics Jeffrey Hathaway announced the hiring of Jason Pasion as the Pride’s new men’s and women’s head coach. Pasion had a successful two-year stint at D2’s NYIT where he won over 70 percent of his matches and led both the men’s and women’s program to deep runs at the NCAA Tournament. Pasion replaced Jeffrey Menaker who departed after one season for unknown reasons.
Missouri women’s head coach Colt Gaston named Jennifer Meredith as the Tigers new assistant coach. Meredith spent the last two seasons as the assistant at UConn and succeeds Gaston who was recently promoted to head coach.
Craig Schwartz, who stepped down as Bucknell’s head coach after last season, was named the volunteer assistant coach at Appalachian State for both the men’s and women’s programs.
I’m still showing a handful of D1 head coaching openings though some of these schools don’t update their website very often i.e. Bethune-Cookman and LIU Brooklyn.
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PlaySight recently introduced a new challenge system called PlayFair which would allow players on SmartCourts to make instant challenges if they disagreed with an opponents call. This article in Tennis Industry Magazine talks about the new system and PlaySight also gave a brief overview on their blog as well. Below is a demo clip of the challenge system which is probably pretty tame compared to what would happen on a college court.
The PlayFair Challenge system was piloted at two different club tournaments in the past few months and will also be piloted at two more events in the coming weeks. During the two club tournaments there were 81 challenges over 31 matches with 34 correct challenges (.420), 39 incorrect (.481), and 8 inconclusive (.099). Anyone that’s attended or played in a tennis match at virtually any level knows how frustrating it can be to see someone intentionally hook someone else with little to no recourse from the chair umpire (if there was a chair onsite to begin with). I think this system is a step in the right direction and hopefully we’ll see some version of it at a college match in the near future. Obviously it would only be available to those that have SmartCourts but it’d be nice to have it in place for the big events like the NCAA Championships where the stakes are the highest.
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11 players with college ties won pro events last week with another 7 finishing as runner-up.
Jarmere Jenkins (Virginia ’13) made it back-to-back singles titles in Australia after defeating #305 Blake Mott 7-6(5), 7-6(2) in the finals of the $25K Australia F7 Futures (Hard) in Toowoomba. Jenkins was out for nine months with an injury but since his return in May he has seen his ranking climb from 1857 to inside the top 500 and when these points are added in next week he should be inside the top 425. Jenkins has now won 8 career Futures singles title and six of them have come “Down Under”.
Yannick Maden (Clemson ’13) won his fourth Futures singles title of the year, sixth overall, after defeating #391 Stefano Travaglia 2-6, 6-4, 6-3 in the finals of the $10K Italy F32 Futures (Clay) in Santa Margherita Di Pula. Maden now has a new career high ranking of 304 and when these 18 points are added in next week he’ll be closer to 290.
Kaitlyn Christian (USC ’14) won her first career pro singles title after defeating #697 Haruka Kaji 5-7, 6-3, 6-2 in the finals of the ITF $10K in Tarakan, Indonesia (Hard). Christian was unranked coming into the tournament and hadn’t won a match at any level since September 2015 so winning five matches in a row was phenomenal.
Emina Bektas (Michigan ’15) swept both the singles and doubles titles at the ITF $10K in Mexico City. Bektas won her second career singles title after defeating the top seed #425 Victoria Rodriguez 6-3, 6-1. Bektas teamed up Jessica Wacnik (Boston College ’15) to win the doubles title with it being Bektas’s fifth of the year and Wacnik’s second. Bektas will have a new career high singles and doubles ranking when these points are added in next week – singles around 670 and doubles at 310. Wacnik will also have a new career high doubles ranking next week around 355
Nathan Pasha (Georgia ’15) won his first doubles title of the year, third career, after he teamed up with Darren Polkinghorne to defeat Maverick Banes and Gavin Van Peperzeel 6-3, 6-4 in the finals of the $25K Australia F7 Futures (Hard) in Toowoomba.
Former Clemson teammates Jessy Rompies and Beatrice Gumulya won their six career pro doubles title as a team with a 6-3, 6-1 win over Kanika Vaidya and Dan Ni Wang in the finals of the ITF $10K in Tarakan, Indonesia.
Pro Titles This Past Week:
Singles:
Australia – Jarmere Jenkins (Virginia ’13)
Italy – Yannick Maden (Clemson ’13)
Indonesia – Kaitlyn Christian (USC ’14)
Mexico – Emina Bektas (Michigan ’15)
Doubles:
Morocco (CH) – Dino Marcan (Ohio State ’10*)
USA – Ema Burgic Bucko (Baylor ’15)/Sabrina Santamaria (USC ’15)
Australia – Nathan Pasha (Georgia ’15)
Indonesia – Jessy Rompies (Clemson ’15)/Beatrice Gumulya (Clemson ’15)
Mexico – Emina Bektas (Michigan ’15)/Jessica Wacnik (Boston College ’15)
Runner-Ups:
Singles:
USA (CH) – Noah Rubin (Wake Forest ’15*)
Israel – Peter Kobelt (Ohio State ’14)
Sweden – Ed Corrie (Texas ’11)
Doubles:
USA (CH) – JP Smith (Tennessee ’11)
Italy – Dominic Cotrone (South Florida ’16)/Alex Rybakov (TCU Soph)
USA – Julia Elbaba (Virginia ’16)
*attended school but didn’t graduate
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