Aug. 17, 2015
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa- The official 2015-2016 Women's Tennis Schedule has been released. Penn State ended their season with a No. 47 rank from the Intercollegiate Tennis Association and 13-11 overall in the 2014-2015 season, leaving them fourth in the Big Ten Conference. The Women's Tennis Program fell in the semifinals of the Big Ten Championships losing to eventual champion Michigan. The team's challenging fall schedule will feature a number of high level tournaments; with the new addition of the Missouri Invitational. In the spring the Nittany Lions prepare for twenty-one matches, 9 at home and face 11 other opponents that will start the season ranked. In addition, 17 of the 2016 spring dual match opponents were ranked at some point during the spring 2015 season.
The squad lost only 3 players, leaving an extremely experienced team that's ready for the upcoming season. Coach Chris Cagle is excited to start another season with this team for his third spring season.
"We have put together a challenging fall schedule to prepare for our spring dual match season. The addition of the Missouri Invitational in Kansas City will mean that all of our squad is competing on our first weekend of play either in Kansas City or in Midland, Texas. Our region has a number of quality teams so the ITA Regionals and Hokie Invitational will be competitive tournaments. We end our fall at the Kitty Harrison Invitational at UNC Chapel Hill which will give us a good gauge in regards to where we are going into the spring."
The Nittany Lions kick off their spring dual matches on January 15th against St. Bonaventure at 5:00pm. That match will be followed with a quality rematch from 2015 against vs No. 49 William and Mary two days later. William and Mary won the CAA conference to advance to the 2015 NCAA Championships.
Next up for the Nittany Lions will the prestigious ITA National Indoors against their first round opponent Brown University. The additional competitors in this ITA National Indoor Regional will be Vanderbilt and Denver. They take on Pittsburgh, VCU, and Columbia (No. 45) before returning home to battle it out with Penn State rival, Ohio State (No. 21), who took second overall in the Big Ten Conference on Friday, February 26th and Marshall (No.52) Sunday, February 28th.
The Spring Break portion of the season includes matchups in Florida against South Florida and Florida Gulf Coast which will conclude the non conference portion of the spring season. The Big Ten road matchups include matches against Minnesota (No. 57), Maryland (No. 67), Rutgers, Purdue (No. 43) and Indiana (No. 48). The remaining home Big Ten contest include Wisconsin, Nebraska, Iowa, Northwestern (No. 26) and Illinois (No. 55) on Senior Day. The Big Ten Championships begin on April 28th and will be followed by the NCAA Team and Individual Championships in May.
Coach Cagle said, "The spring 2016 dual match schedule will be a great, competitive season. Our team looks forward to the ITA Kickoff Weekend, a number of quality non-conference matches and the Big Ten schedule. We return an experienced team that will put the work in all year to see how far we can take it this year. This will be an exciting year for our program!"
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