Aug. 18, 2010
ATLANTA – Georgia Tech rising senior Eliot Potvin defeated three seeded players and finished as the runner-up at the ITA/USTA National Summer Championship, which concluded Aug. 11 at the Indiana University Varsity Tennis Center.
The ITA/USTA National Summer Championships are the pinnacle of the ITA Collegiate Summer Circuit, which was played at 32 regional sites throughout the country last month. A total of 2,965 players participated in ITA Summer Circuit events this year, falling just short of 2009’s record-breaking mark of 2,976.
Potvin, a native of Hampden, Maine, earned the No. 2 seed in the event by reaching the semifinals of the Southeast Circuit in Tuscaloosa, Ala. He won all of his matches but one in straight sets on the way to the finals, defeating seeded players Geoffry Embry of Arizona, Christopher Price of TCU and Patrick Daciek of Virginia Tech. He fell, 6-3, 6-1, to Thomas Richter, formerly of Indiana, in the finals.
His finish earned him a spot in the qualification draw for the D’Novo/ITA All-American Championships later in the fall.
“I’m very happy with the way things went in these tournaments,” said Potvin, who was ranked No. 111 in the nation after the spring season, but sat out six weeks with an ankle injury. “I had rested my ankle from the beginning of the summer, but I beat a lot of good players in the tournament at Alabama, so it was good for my confidence. The guy that beat me in the finals in Indy was a very good player.”
He posted a 22-13 record for Georgia Tech last year, including a 16-9 mark in the spring dual season. Potvin played fourteen of his 25 dual matches at the No. 3 spot in the lineup, and went 9-5 in those contests.
Nearly 30,000 men and women have competed in ITA Summer Circuit events since it began in 1993. The circuit provides college (and junior and alumni) players the opportunity to compete in organized events virtually year round. Although the primary focus of the circuit is to provide incoming freshman and collegiate players the chance to compete in the summer months, for NCAA compliance purposes, the events within the ITA Summer Circuit are categorized as “open”; therefore anyone is eligible to compete in these events as long as he/she is a current ITA member.
The ITA Summer Circuit is currently made up of eight regional circuits (East, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, Midwest, Central, Mountain, Southwest and West) and all eight regions consist of four consecutive open tournaments played during the month of July, leading up to the August 7-11 ITA/USTA National Summer Championships in Bloomington, Indiana.
The singles and doubles champions from the ITA/USTA National Summer Championships earn wild cards into the first national tournaments of the 2010-11 collegiate tennis season – the D’Novo Men’s and Riviera/ITA Women’s All-American Championships in early October.
