Oct. 18, 2012
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - Women's tennis travels to Virginia Tech for the ITA Atlantic Regionals this weekend. The tournament will begin on Friday with qualifying rounds of singles and doubles and will continue through Tuesday, Oct. 23 at the Burrows-Burleson Tennis Center in Blacksburg, Va.
Petra Januskova earned the No. 1 seed in the tournament's singles and doubles draws. Chelsea Utting joins her as the No. 1 seed in doubles. With their No. 1 seed they also earn a first-round bye and will play their first match at 8 a.m. on Saturday. Katherine Whiteaway and Devan McCluskey also received a first-round bye in the doubles draw and will not play until 9 a.m. on Saturday.
Utting, McCluskey, Whiteaway and Carmen Sandor will join Januskova in the main draw of singles which start on Saturday.
Utting is coming off of the ITA All-American Championships where she competed in the qualifying round of the singles draw and in the doubles main draw where she defeated the No. 16 ranked pair of Olivia Smith and Millie Nichols from TCU with teammate Petra Januskova.
Sandor heads to the Regionals after winning her consolation bracket at the Tribe Invitational in Williamsburg, Va. After losing her first round match, she defeated Dana Oppinger of Marshall and Amy He of Harvard to take the back draw crown. Sandor leads the team with six singles victories going into this tournament.
Freshman Devan McCluskey earned a spot in the main draw with her impressive 9-4 (5-2 singles, 4-2 doubles) record. McCluskey is also coming off of the Tribe Invitational where she won the Lauren Nikolaus Singles Flight after defeating Amanda Lin of Harvard in the final.
Freshman Katherine Whiteaway looks to build off of her success at the Tribe Invitational where she won three matches and took home the back draw crown in doubles with McCluskey.
Sarah Henderson and Jacqueline Zuhse will compete in the qualifying round of singles on Friday. The qualifying round has 32 players vying for one of the eight qualifying spots in the main draw.
Zuhse will face Mimi Hamling of George Washington at 8 a.m. with the winner playing again at 11 a.m. Henderson will take on Temple's Jordan Bately at 9:30 for a chance to play again at 12:30 p.m.
In the afternoon, Henderson and Zuhse will team up to play Amanda and Molly Wickman of Pitt. This will be the second time Henderson and Zuhse have played together this fall. They fell to Maryland's duo of Vroni Van Berlo and Sarah Gealar, 8-5, last time out.