Tigers Host ITA Central Regional Championships
The Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) Central Region Women's Championships will take place Oct. 3-6 at Wittenberg University's Georgiana Albright Tennis Complex.
Emily Figel
The Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) Central Region Women's Championships will take place Oct. 3-6 at Wittenberg University's Georgiana Albright Tennis Complex.
The ITA Central Region Championship is one of eight regional tournaments for Division III women taking place across the country over a two-week span. The singles and doubles champions from these regional tournaments advance to the ITA National Small College Championships, presented by the United States Tennis Association (USTA), Oct. 16-19, in Corpus Christi, Texas. In 2002, Wittenberg's Casey Clagett won the men's regional title in September and advanced to the national championships in October. He went on to gain All-America status.
The 2003 ITA Central Region Women's Championships features some of the finest players in the nation, including Wittenberg's top player, junior Emily Figel (Fort Wayne, Ind./Homestead). She has won at least two matches in the tournament each of the last two years, and this year she enters the competition seeded No. 3 in the singles draw. In 2002, DePauw's Haley Heathman won the singles championship over her teammate, Liz Bondi. The doubles title went to Denison's top-seeded duo of Lauren Gerlach and Alison Hughes in three sets over DePauw's unseeded team of Jill Anderson and Alex Nelson.
The Tiger men's and women's teams are both of to strong starts to the 2003-04 season. Both recorded wins against Ohio Dominican in their only dual matches of the fall campaign, and both played well against top competition, including Division I programs in the University of Dayton, Wright State, Detroit and Youngstown State, in the Wittenberg Invitational. In addition, the Tiger men completed their ITA Central Region Tournament last weekend at DePauw, with senior Duby Lakos (Lynchburg, Va./Heritage) and junior Ben Burkam (Delaware, Ohio/Hayes) each winning a pair of singles matches. Lakos and sophomore Matt Treblas (Aurora, Ohio/Aurora) reached the quarterfinals of the doubles draw.