Jan. 12, 2006
ATLANTA – The fourth-ranked Georgia Tech women’s tennis team will open the spring portion of its 2005-06 campaign this weekend by competing in the fourth annual Michigan Invitational in Ann Arbor, Mich. The round-robin tournament is scheduled to begin Friday and will continue through Sunday and features No. 17 California, No. 43 LSU and No. 35 Michigan, along with the Yellow Jackets.
The event will be based on a “hidden dual-match” format, where teams will square off against each other, but the outcome will not be scored as a team effort. Each match will count toward an individual players’ record and rankings, however.
“We’re excited about the opportunity that we have to play this weekend,” said Georgia Tech head coach Bryan Shelton. “It seems like we’ve been waiting an eternity to get started with this spring season.”
The Yellow Jackets’ schedule of play will be as follows:
Friday
12 p.m. – Singles vs. California
6 p.m. – Doubles vs. Michigan
Saturday
12:30 p.m. – Singles vs. LSU
3:30 p.m. – Doubles vs. California
Sunday
9:30 a.m. – Doubles vs. LSU
2 p.m. – Singles vs. Michigan
California, ranked 17th in the first Fila Collegiate Tennis Ranking, features six singles players and one doubles tandem that are ranked in the individual polls. The Bears reached the Sweet-16 at the 2005 NCAA Championship and are led by coach Jan Borgan, who is in her 28th season at Cal.
LSU is the No. 43 team in the nation according to the first poll of the spring, and returns seven letterwinners from the 2005 team, which advanced to the first round of NCAA’s a year ago. Head coach Tony Minnis begins his 15th season at the school and has guided the Tigers to 11 consecutive NCAA appearances.
Rounding out the opponents this weekend is host school Michigan, which is ranked 35th in the nation. Under the direction of Bitsy Ritt, who begins her 21st season at the helm of the program, the Wolverines have participated in the NCAA Tournament in seven of the last 10 seasons.
There will be a total of 12 singles players and three doubles tandems participating in this weekend’s competition that are currently ranked in the Fila Collegiate Tennis Rankings.
Ranked singles and doubles players competing this weekend at the Michigan Invitational:
Singles-
No. 7 Kristi Miller, Georgia Tech
No. 17 Suzie Babos, California
No. 19 Zsuzsanna Fodor, California
No. 25 Tarryn Rudman, Georgia Tech
No. 34 Marion Ravelojaona, California
No. 35 Kelly Anderson, Georgia Tech
No. 48 Nina Yaftali, Michigan
No. 61 Stephanie Kusano, California
No. 71 Lyndsay Shosho, Georgia Tech
No. 76 Debra Streifler, Michigan
No. 83 Claire Ilcinkas, California
No. 92 Cristina Visico, California
Doubles-
No. 7 Babos/Fodor, California
No. 26 Miller/Shosho, Georgia Tech
No. 42 Anderson/McCray, Georgia Tech
“There will be great competition this weekend with Cal-Berkeley, which I think is one of the premier teams in the country, Michigan, a perennial top-30 team, and LSU, which has made the Sweet-16 in years’ past,” said Shelton. “I think that it will be a great weekend of tennis, and that we will find out a lot about ourselves. Hopefully we will finally get some answers as far as our lineup is concerned.”
Following the competition in Michigan, the Yellow Jackets will next participate in National Tem Indoors in Madison, Wisconsin Feb. 2-5.
