Oct. 21, 2009
ATLANTA – Georgia Tech’s men’s tennis team will send all 11 of its players to Athens, Ga., this weekend for the Wilson/ITA Southeast Regional Tennis Championships at the Dan Magill Tennis Complex.
The field includes 72 players representing 13 schools from the states of Georgia and Florida. The champions in singles and doubles advance to play in the ITA National Indoor Championships, Nov. 5-8, in New Haven, Conn.
Sixteen players, including Tech’s Miguel Muguruza, Ryan Smith, Magin Ortiga, Austin Roebuck and Doug Kenny, will participate in qualifying singles matches beginning at 4:30 p.m. Thursday. The eight winners will enter the 64-player main draw that begins Friday at 11 a.m.
In the main draw are All-American Guillermo Gomez, Eliot Potvin, Dean O’Brien, Dusan Miljevic, Kevin King and Juan Spir.
Head coach Kenny Thorne is looking for the Yellow Jackets to build on their recent success at the Bulldog Scramble in Athens, where they won 21 of 28 singles matches.
“We will have all the best competition in Georgia and Florida at our regionals,” said Thorne. “These are two very good states that comprise some of the top collegiate players in the nation. We want to build on the success of our last tournament and doing well at regionals would do that. The guys have been working hard but all the teams have been working hard. We are looking to establish some consistent results.”
Gomez, a junior from Alicante, Spain, ranked No. 5 in the nation, has won six of seven singles matches this fall, the only loss coming in the first round of the D’Novo/ITA All-American Championships in Tulsa, Okla. The co-champion of the Southern Intercollegiate Championship in Athens in September, Gomez will face Florida State’s Keith Embree in his first-round match Friday.
Miljevic, a sophomore from Novi Sad, Serbia, is 7-0 this fall, including four wins at the recent Bulldog Scramble in Athens. His first-round match Friday will be against the winner of a qualifying match between Stetson’s Alexander Hackett and FSU’s Chris Reiman.
Potvin plays Central Florida’s Claudio Romano in a first-round match in the main draw Friday, while O’Brien faces South Florida’s Yannick Yoshizawa, King meets Matt Rock of Florida Gulf Coast, and Spir takes on FSU’s Anderson Reed.
Also having an excellent fall is Miguel Muguruza, a sophomore from Wesley Chapel, Fla., who went 4-0 at the Bulldog Scramble and is 7-2 overall. He is also 5-3 in his doubles matches, and is paired with Miljevic in doubles for this weekend’s event. Muguruza opens Thursday with a qualifying match against FSU’s Owen Long.
Other qualifying matches Thursday include Smith against Georg Matschke of Florida Atlantic, Ortiga against Mercer’s David Barton, Roebuck against Stetson’s Christopher Swanteson and Kenny against Georgia State’s Matthjis Verdam.
Kenny and Ortiga are paired in doubles, along with O’Brien and King, Smith and Spir, and Potvin and Roebuck. Potvin and Roebuck, at 2-0, are the only duo to have played together this fall.
Friday’s schedule features two rounds of doubles (9 a.m. and 4 p.m.) and the first round of singles in the main draw (11 a.m.). Saturday’s slate begins with the quarterfinals in doubles at 9 a.m., followed by two rounds of singles beginning at 11 a.m. Quarterfinals and semifinals in singles, as well as semifinals and finals in doubles, are scheduled for Sunday, with singles finals slated for Monday.
