W. Tennis
Mocs to Host USTA/ITA South Regional Championships
12 men's teams and 12 women's teams will be in Lakeland this weekend
LAKELAND - The Florida Southern men's and women's tennis teams will host the 2012 USTA/ITA South Regional Championships this coming weekend, Sept. 27-30, at both the Beermann Family Tennis Center off of Edgewood Drive and the Wynee Warden Tennis Center on the FSC campus. The Beerman Family Tennis Center has 18 courts, while the Wynee Warden Complex has 10 courts.
The South Regional Championships will include 12 teams on both the men's and women's side. The tournament, which has been limited to 4 entries per team per gender, will feature 48 singles players and 24 doubles teams for the women and 46 singles players and 23 doubles teams for the men. The conferences competing this weekend are the Sunshine State (SSC) and Gulf South (GSC) conferences.
"There will be some high quality tennis matches this weekend at this tournament," Mocs head coach and tournament director Trish Riddell said. "We have limited the amount of competitors to four per team per gender and that will help increase the competitiveness of the matches and will allow us to play all the matches out."
The tournament will begin with doubles action beginning at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday and will continue up until Sunday afternoon. The brackets for both the women and men are listed below and complete results will be posted following each day of tournament action.
Competing this weekend for the Mocs women's team in singles is sophomore Magda Riutort (Petra, Spain), junior Sabine Goge (Cesis, Latvia) and junior Joalis Dominguez (Vero Beach, Fla.), while sophomore Olivia Spagnuolo (Andover, Mass.) and junior Laura Wichmann (Waldshut-Tiengen, Germany) will join Goge and Riutort in doubles action. Riutort and Goge are seeded No. 3 and 5 in the singles draw and are paired together in doubles and are seeded No. 3.
The Mocs men's team will be represented this weekend in both singles and doubles by junior Benoit Paradis (Quebec City, Quebec), sophomore Emanuel Luber (Tiengen, Germany), junior Nathan Leavitt (Bradenton, Fla.) and junior Jorge Gutierrez (Madrid, Spain). Paradis is seeded No. 9 in the singles draw, while Paradis is paired with Luber in the doubles draw and they are seeded fifth.
Following the USTA/ITA South Regional Championship, the singles and doubles champions from Lakeland will advance to the USTA/ITA National Small College Championships on Oct. 11-14 at the Copeland-Cox Tennis Center in Mobile, Ala. The USTA/ITA National Small College Championships are comprised of the eight regional champions (and/or at-large selections) from NCAA Divisions II and III, NAIA and Junior/Community Colleges.
The USTA/ITA National Small College Championship is the only national championship event for singles and doubles at the NCAA Division II and NAIA levels. It is also the only tournament that combines all levels of Junior/Community College (NJCAA Divisions I and III and the California division). The singles and doubles champions at each divisional level will then compete to become the overall “Super Bowl” champions. The "Super Bowl" champions earn wild cards into the USTA/ITA National Intercollegiate Indoor Championships with the opportunity to win the culminating event held at the USTA-Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.
