|
Women’s Tennis Heads to 2003 ITA Women’s All-American Championships 10/3/2003 The Vanderbilt women’s tennis team will open play at the 2003 ITA Women’s All-American Championships tomorrow, Oct. 4, in Los Angeles, Calif. Vanderbilt senior Aleke Tsoubanos returns to the All-American to defend the doubles title she won with 2003 graduate Sarah Riske.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> The ITA Women’s All-American, November’s ITA National Intercollegiate Indoor Championships, and the NCAA Championships in May are college tennis’ three national championship events during the season. The Oct. 9-12 main draw is preceded by two sets of qualifying tournaments. The 64-player (32 doubles) pre-qualifying tournament is Oct. 4-5 at UCLA and four players and doubles teams will advance from there to the Oct. 7-8 64-player qualifying tournament at Riviera (where eight players and four doubles teams will advance to the main draw). “This is one of the best tournaments of the fall,” Coach Geoff Macdonald said. “It is an honor just to make the draw. This team worked very hard in the off-season, and we may have had the most productive summer ever. Playing in this tournament will give us a really good snapshot of where a lot of people stand early in the year.” Six Commodores will take to the courts in California. Junior Audra Falk, the main draw champion at the 2003 Furman Fall Classic, is the No. 1 seed in the pre-qualifying tournament. The 91st-ranked Falk will open play against Helga Vieira of Texas A&M at 1:30 p.m. CT. Junior Annie Menees, who also won her flight at the Furman Fall Classic, is scheduled to face Chris Martinez of Washington State at the same time. Vanderbilt’s four remaining competitors, seniors Kelly Schmandt and Aleke Tsoubanos, sophomore Ashley Schellhas and freshman Amanda Fish have all been placed through to the qualifying tournament, which begins on Monday, Oct. 6, in Pacific Palisades, Calif., and continues until Sunday, Oct. 12. Fish received a wild card into the draw, based on her pre-season success, for which she also was named ITA Summer Circuit Player of the Year. The three remaining Commodores are all ranked (Tsoubanos, 50; Schmandt, 58; Schellhas, 85) in the ITA’s pre-season top 100. In doubles, Tsoubanos will team up with fellow-senior Schmandt. That pairing has been seeded through to Oct. 6’s qualifying tournament. The duo of Falk and Menees, winners of the main draw doubles championship at the Furman Fall Classic, will begin play at 6 p.m. CT on Saturday in the first round of pre-qualifying against Pepperdine’s Merve Asimgil and Natalie Braverman. Schellhas and Fish also will team up, taking on the UT-Arlington’s Marketa Cizova and Daniela Novakova at 6 p.m CT. |
