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ITA National Summer Championships; US Open Wild Cards Announced; Coaching Updates

by | Aug 16, 2017 | Blog

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The brief college tennis summer session officially came to a close on Tuesday with singles and doubles champions crowned at the ITA National Summer Championships in Fort Worth, Texas. Notre Dame junior Alex Lebedev won the men’s singles championship after winning a pair of matches on Tuesday. Lebedev edged Penn junior Kyle Mautner 7-6, 5-7, 10-6 in the semifinals then a few hours later in the finals he defeated defeated Omaha sophomore Razvan Grigorescu 6-3, 6-2. Lebedev entered the event as the No. 10 seed and won all his matches in straight sets except for the match with Mautner. 

Winthrop junior Lauren Proctor won the women’s singles championship in a similar fashion to Lebedev. The No. 4 seed Proctor won all her matches in straight sets except for her semifinal match against the top seed Duke junior Kaitlyn McCarthy. Proctor came back from a set down to defeat McCarthy 4-6, 7-5, 10-4 and then in the finals she beat TCU senior Donika Bashota 6-2, 6-3. 

Texas juniors Rodrigo Banzer and Leo Telles won the men’s doubles championship with an 8-3 win over Michigan’s Myles Schalet and Gabe Tishman while Duke juniors Kaitlyn McCarthy and Ellyse Hamlin won the women’s doubles championship with an 8-2 win over Iowa’s Zoe Douglas and Elise van Heuvelen. 

All the winners get main draw wild cards into the upcoming All American Championships while the finalists receive qualifying wild cards. To view all the results from the past four days click on this link. 

The US Open announced its main draw and qualifying wild cards today with a slew of players with college ties selected to participate in the final Grand Slam event of the year. Men’s main draw wild cards went to Chris Eubanks (Ga Tech Sr) and NCAA singles champion Thai Kwiatkowski (Virginia ’17) while men’s qualifying wild cards went to NCAA runner-up Will Blumberg (North Carolina Soph), Kalamazoo runner-up JJ Wolf (Ohio State Soph), Austin Krajicek (Texas A&M ’11), Bradley Klahn (Stanford ’12), Daniel Nguyen (USC ’12), Evan King (Michigan ’13), Marcos Giron (UCLA ’14*), Ray Sarmiento (USC ’14), and Jared Hiltzik (Illinois ’16) The release from the US Open is available here. 

The only player with college ties to score a main draw wild card on the women’s side was NCAA singles champion Brienne Minor (Michigan Jr) although Ellen Perez, who recently left Georgia to turn pro, is in the running for Australia’s reciprocal wild card – see the USO’s release for more details. Qualifying wild cards were awarded to Francesca Di Lorenzo (Ohio State Jr), Ashley Lahey (Pepperdine Soph), and Girls 18 runner-up Kelly Chen (Duke Fresh).

 

 

Cami Hobbs was named the new women’s head coach at Sacramento State. Hobbs, who played collegiately at Ohio State, had been the assistant coach at Cal Poly for the past two years. This past season Clarisse Baca filled in as the acting head coach after Dima Hrynashka left last October after 10 years on the job. Below are a few quotes from Sac State’s release:

“We are extremely excited to bring Cami aboard,” Sacramento State Athletic Director Mark Orr said. “She has very good experience as both a player and coach. She was one of the greatest all-time prep players, had a successful playing career at Ohio State, and had coaching stops at Dayton, Illinois State, College of Saint Mary’s and Cal Poly. Cami has some familiarity with the West Coast having coached at Cal Poly, and she has been around coaching her entire life as her father was a longtime successful Div. I head coach.”

“I am extremely honored and very excited to be the next head coach at Sacramento State,” Hubbs said. “I would like to thank Director of Athletics Mark Orr, Associate Athletics Director/SWA Lois Mattice and the entire search committee for the opportunity to lead the Hornet women’s tennis program into a new era. I look forward to working closely with our student-athletes, the superb athletics department and the Sacramento community.”

 

 

Freddy Gomez was named as the new women’s head coach at Northwestern State. Gomez spent one season as the head coach at Louisiana Tech in 2013 (15-5 record) before stepping down to become the women’s assistant at Virginia Tech. Gomez replaces Olga Bazhanova who stepped down after three seasons to become the associate head coach at Texas A&M Corpus Christi. Below are a few quotes from NSU’s release:

“Freddy will be a good fit for our athletic program and most importantly, for the young ladies on our women’s tennis team,” said Burke. “He is family-oriented and will serve as a good role model who will be supportive of our student-athletes in all aspects of their lives.

“From a tennis perspective, he has been involved with winning programs. He understands – and will embrace – the challenge of sustaining the high level of success which has been established within the NSU women’s tennis program,” Burke said. “As a head coach, and as an assistant coach, he made immediate impact to dramatically improve the teams he coached.”

“I would like to thank our athletic director Mr. Burke, WRAC Director Mr. (Patric) DuBois, President (Dr. Chris) Maggio and the search and interview committees for their efforts during this process. I am excited to work for Northwestern State University and the opportunity to lead NSU tennis,” said Gomez. “I’m honored to lead a program with so much tradition and success.

“Our goal is to build higher levels of success, attain significant national recognition, and be the top Division I team in the state, athletically and academically. We will strive to win the Southland Conference each year and make consistent appearances at the national tournament.” 

 

 

Below are some assistant coaching hired made in the last week plus there is an opening for a volunteer assistant at Loyola Marymount so interested candidates can apply here. 

Jeremy Efferding (Georgia Tech), Brian Ward (Minnesota), Tetiana Luzhanska (UNLV), Hannah Fleckenstein (Colgate), and Jieke Stroobant (BGSU).