Men's Tennis | 10/15/2014 2:44:00 PM
Live Scoring for USTA/ITA Texas Regional Women's ChampionshipsABILENE - Abilene Christian's men's and women's tennis teams are split this weekend for the prestigious USTA/ITA Texas Regional Championships. The women begin their singles and doubles draws at Baylor's Hurd Tennis Center Thursday, while the men take to the court Saturday at Texas A&M's Mitchell Tennis Center.
Approximately 17 Texas schools have entered the championship field and their competitors will comprise one (men's and women's) 128-player singles draw and one 64-team doubles bracket.
The women's singles draw features 16 seeded competitors led by Texas' No. 1 Breaunna Addison. None of the Wildcats' are seeded, but those receiving first-round byes are freshman
Lucile Pothier, sophomore
Erin Walker and senior
Brittney Reed.
First-round matches for the Wildcats include freshman
Carli Knezevich vs. SMU's Anna Kate Anderson, sophomore
Ansley Boarman vs. Texas Tech's Sabrina Federici, junior
Kaysie Hermsdorf vs. Rice's Alison Ho, freshman
Whitney Williams vs. Baylor's Kelley Anderson, and junior
Nada Marjanovic vs. Sam Houston's Fabienne Gettwart.
ACU, Sam Houston State, Incarnate Word and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi are the only Southland Conference schools (out of seven) competing at this tournament which will run into the early part of next week.
The top-seeded doubles team is Ines Dehaza and Rachel Pierson of Texas A&M. They received a bye into the second-round as have all four ACU tandems: Boarman/Marjanovic, Hermsdorf/Pothier Knezevich/Williams and Reed/Walker.
Hermsdorf's and Pothier's second-round opponents will be the Aggies' No. 8 seeds Rutaja Bhosale and Stefania Hristove, while Walker and Reed begin their run vs. seventh-seeded Saska Gavrilovska and Eva Paalman of Texas A&M.
Information and draws for the men's tournament at Texas A&M has yet to be released.
Last year the Wildcat men were led by senior Borja Cortés who made it all the way to the finals of the consolation draw before being forced to withdraw because of classroom considerations.
Cortés went 4-1 overall and earned wins over Antonio Cavazos of Incarnate Word, 6-0, 6-0, and Andre Napolitano of Texas Tech, 6-3, 4-6, 1-0 (6), before receiving a bye in the quarterfinals. In the consolation semifinals, Cortés beat Joel Rubio of UT-San Antonio, 6-4, 3-6, 10-3.
ACU won three of its four doubles matches in the first round of consolations. Cortés and
Guilherme Gesser edged Colunga/Montague of Texas A&M, 8-7 (5). Freshman
Nico Agritelley and sophomore
Jason Proctor beat the UT-Arlington team of Colvee /Echeverry, 8-5, and the tandem of
Nicklas Wingord and
Michael Morris topped Lamar's Crysel/Lindquist, 8-7 (6).
Agritelley and Proctor later defeated the TCU team of Alfonzo/Wiggins, 8-3, in the consolation quarters, but then lost 8-2 in the semifinals to TCU's third-seeded pairing of Chappell/Stein.
Micah Hermsdorf led the Wildcats' women's team at last year's regionals hosted by TCU with four singles victories, three of which came in consolations.
Hermsdorf's tournament run started with a tough three-set loss to 17th-seeded Bhosale of Texas A&M, 5-7, 6-2, 6-4, but she then cruised through her first consolation match against Incarnate Word's Kelsey Reblin, 6-1, 6-1.
In the Round of 16, Hermsdorf defeated the consolation bracket's fifth-seed Giada D'Ortona of Texas-Arlington, 6-3, 6-2. Unfortunately, her run came to an end in the quarterfinals, where she dropped a three-set decision to third-seeded Pippa Horn of Texas, 7-5, 1-6, 7-6 (10-2).
