The first Intercollegiate Tennis Association Championship of the season will take place next week, and the Texas A&M women’s tennis team will be sending seven players to Los Angeles to join the competition.
The ITA Riviera All-American competition, hosted by the Riviera Tennis Club for the 19th year, is divided into 3 stages of qualification. The first stage is a pre-qualifying round, which is being played at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) on Oct. 6 and 7.
Aggies competing in singles play will be seniors Leah Killen, Martina Nedorostova, and Majorie Terburgh, junior Ashley Hedberg and sophomore Roberta Spencer.
The tournament features one of the toughest fields in college tennis.
“This tournament is probably the strongest, compared to the NCAA Championships, of the year,” said women’s tennis coach Bobby Kleinecke. “Our main focus going into this tournament is the team and to help ourselves play better for when the spring team season comes around.
“A good showing at this tournament can help individual rankings that will affect our team ranking going into next semester.”
The doubles teams of seniors Olivia Karlikova and Spencer and Hedberg and Nedorostova will also compete in the pre-qualifying round. Winners will advance to the qualifying round.
Karlikova and sophomore Jessica Roland have earned a bye for the pre-qualifying round and begin singles competition in the qualifying round October 9 and 10 at the Riviera Tennis Club.
The doubles team of Roland and Terburgh will also automatically advance to the second round.
No Aggies have earned a bye into the final round, or Main Draw competition, that will take place Oct. 11-14.
Byes are based on individual rankings and include the top 10-ranked players in women’s intercollegiate competition.
Spots in the upper two stages are also reserved for players who advance from competition in the lower levels.
The best showing at an ITA tournament last year for the Aggies was by the doubles team of Roland and Hedberg who advanced to the semifinals of the Main Draw before being defeated in three sets by the then top-ranked duo of Paola Palencia and Ipek Senoglu from Pepperdine University.
Their trip to the final-four was the farthest of any A&M women’s players in the history of the tournament.
The next competition for the women’s team will be the ITA Southwest Regional taking place in Fort Worth, Texas the weekend of Oct. 19th-22nd.