March 22, 2007
ATLANTA – Riding a three-match winning streak, the sixth-ranked Georgia Tech women’s tennis team heads into this weekend hosting a pair of key Atlantic Coast Conference matches against No. 9 Miami, the runner-up at the 2006 NCAA Championships and the 2006 ACC Championships, and Florida State, one of the top-15 teams in the nation.
Tech faces Miami Saturday at 12 noon before hosting Florida State at 10 a.m. on Sunday in the first part of a tennis doubleheader with the Yellow Jacket men’s team. There will be free pizza available to the first 100 fans at Saturday’s match against the Hurricanes while the Georgia Tech tennis teams will have free barbeque for fans attending Sunday’s matches.
“One of our goals coming into this season was to win the ACC Regular Season title, and this is a pivotal weekend for our team if we hope to accomplish that goal,” said Georgia Tech head coach Bryan Shelton. “Miami is again not only one of the top teams in the conference, but also in the nation, while Florida State is having an amazing year, having moved into the top-20 for the first time in several years.”
The Yellow Jackets and Hurricanes will be squaring off for the first time since last year’s ACC Championship match, in which the Jackets won their second-straight conference title with a 4-1 win in the finals. That match featured the top two singles players in the nation in Miami’s Audra Cohen, who is again ranked No. 1 in the ITA Singles Rankings, and Georgia Tech’s Kristi Miller, who stands at No. 6 in this week’s rankings. The two will square off again this Saturday immediately following doubles play.
Tech leads the series with Miami, 5-3, having won each of the last five matches between the two schools, while Florida State holds the 16-6 edge over the Yellow Jackets. Tech, however, has been the more successful team of late, winning each of the last three matches against the Seminoles.
“Florida State brings energy and fight into every match so I know that we hare going to have our hands full this weekend,” added Shelton. “We have had some outstanding crowds at our matches already this season, and we hope to have another great home crowd out there to help us get through it.”
