Oct. 18, 2006
FORT WORTH, Texas - The TCU women's tennis team will host the 2006 Wilson/ITA Fall Southwest Regional Championships this week at the Bayard H. Friedman Tennis Center.
"It is a great honor to once again be hosting this prestigious ITA event," said interim head coach Jefferson Hammond. "We have hosted in the past and to be selected again shows people have respect for our facilities and program. Our facility is one of the top-5 in the country and we take tremendous pride in welcoming some of the best players in the nation to our home court."
The tournament will begin on Thursday with the first two rounds of the qualifying main draw of singles. It will run through Monday when the finals for singles and doubles will take place. Competition is set to begin at 9:30 a.m. (CT) Thursday.
The regional champions will also automatically qualify for the National Indoor Championships that will be held Nov. 2-5.
The Frogs will have six singles player and three doubles teams participating in the event. In singles play, No. 80 Anna Sydorska (No. 5 seed) and No. 114 Ana Cetnik (No. 7 seed) are top-10 seeds and Kewa Nicholsis seeded No. 17. Karine Ionesco and Nina Munch-Soegaard will also participate in the main draw.
TCU's Melissa Beré will open competition Thursday, as she takes on Urska Dobersek (MSU) in the first round of the qualifying bracket.
In doubles action, the Cetnik/Sydorska pair, ranked No. 24 in the nation, received a No. 2 seed and first round bye in the opening round of play. Beré will pair up with Ionesco to face Rice's Jennifer Pan and Veronica Sagastequi at approximately 2:30 p.m. Thursday afternoon. Meanwhile, the Frogs' other duo of Munch-Soegaard and Kewa Nichols earned a No. 15 overall seed and will face a team from the University of Houston Thursday afternoon.
Hammond said he is looking forward to the tournament as TCU has found success at regionals during the last two years.
"Helena Besovic and Sydorska won the Southwest Regional Championships doubles title last year," said Hammond. "It was the first regional doubles title in school history for the Horned Frogs and amazingly, they came in as the No. 13 seed. The year before that, Helena won the singles title at regionals after earning a fifth seed. So, anything can happen at this event. We do feel that we have the capabilities to do very well again."
Hammond was named interim head coach in late August and a few weeks later he led Cetnik and Sydorska to the Baylor Fall Invitational doubles title. On Sept. 29 he hired Colin Foster, a former college standout, as the new assistant coach.
"We have made a smooth transition as far as the change in coaching staff," he said. "We are very happy with where we've come this far regarding effort, attitude and performance."
Eighteen Wilson/ITA Regional Championships for NCAA Division I men and women are taking place over these last two weekends of October at campuses throughout the country.
The 2006 ITA National Intercollegiate Indoor Championships, the nation's premier collegiate indoor tennis tournament, is the second of three national championship events for college tennis this season. The first events - the Riviera/ITA Women's and Polo Ralph Lauren Men's All-American Championships - were held earlier this month, and the third event is season-ending NCAA Championships in May. The ITA National Intercollegiate Indoor Championships feature a 32-player singles field and 16-team doubles field for men and women, including: qualifiers from these Wilson/ITA Regional Championships held across the country, the ITA National Small College champions, top performers from the ITA All-American Championships and at-large card selections made by the ITA National Tournament Committee. Overall, more than 7,000 players from nearly 600 schools participate annually in the ITA Regional and National Intercollegiate Championships.
Results from the tournament will be posted following the conclusion of each day at GoFrogs.com, the official Web site of TCU Athletics.
