PENSACOLA – The Florida Southern College women's tennis team will open its fall season at the USTA/ITA Division II South Region Championships here this weekend. Play begins Friday and runs thru the championship on Monday. The matches are hosted by the University of West Florida and will be played at the Ralph "Skeeter" Carson Tennis Complex on the campus of UWF and the Roger Scott Tennis Center in Pensacola.

Coach Trish Riddell will be taking five players to the regionals with four in singles play and two doubles teams. Competing in the 54-players singles bracket will be four new players for the Moccasins in sophomores Sasha Nionova and Linnea Skymberg along with freshmen Selin Devrimci and Lorena Rionda.

Nionova, who transferred to Florida Southern from the University of Detroit, receives an opening round bye and will therefore begin play on Friday at 2:30 pm. At UD, she was named the Horizon League Freshman of the Year as well as first-team all-conference. She finished with an 11-13 record, but was 9-3 over her last 12 matches. Nionova is from Riga, Latvia where she finished third in the Latvian U-18 National Championships in 2011.

Shymberg is also a Division I transfer, joining the Moccasins from Troy University in Alabama. Last season, she was 9-13 in singles and was an ITA Scholar-Athlete. She hails from Akers Styckebruk, Sweden while since was ranked No. 7 in the nation and No. 1 in her region. Skymberg will open play on Friday at 1:30 pm against Sofia Carrera of Mississippi College.

Devrimci comes to Florida Southern from Oslo, Norway where she placed third in singles and first in doubles at the 2014 Norwegian U-18 Championships. She will face Palm Beach Atlantic's Katharine Tesar Friday at 1 pm.

Rionda joins the Moccasins from Gijón, Spain. She will open play Friday at 1 pm against Katie Cooke of Mississippi College.

All of Friday's singles play will be contested at the Roger Scott Tennis Center.

The winners from singles will play a second match later on Friday. As mentioned, Nionova will play at 2:30 pm. Skymberg, Devrimci, and Rionda would all play at 3:00 pm. The women's consolation bracket begins Saturday at 11 am.

In doubles, Devrimci and Skymberg will team up to face host West Florida's team of Giovana Patitucci and Valeria Matilla on Friday at 8 pm. FSC's other doubles team of Nionova and returning player Nina Vucevic will play Friday at 8 pm vs. Fabiana Vitanza and Savanna Fuller of Rollins College.

Vucevic was 5-5 with the Moccasins last season as a freshman, including a 5-2 mark at #3 singles. She teamed with Miroslava Mensikova to post a 7-4 record at #2 doubles in 2014-15. She joined Florida Southern in January 2015 after graduating from Allendale in Sophia-Antipolis, France.

The winners will advance the USTA/ITA Small College Championships.

West Florida Tournament Web Page:   Women's Singles Draw  |  Women's Doubles Draw