The Intercollegiate Tennis Association’s (ITA) Central Regional Championships are set to start Thursday in Norman, Oklahoma. With eight members of the Iowa State University Women’s Tennis team in attendance for the tournament, the Cyclones will look to claim a spot in the NCAA Singles Championships and NCAA Doubles Championships.
This tournament format is similar to the ITA All-American Championships, which had a pre-qualifying, qualifying and main draw that the Cyclones had to go through. But with this tournament being smaller, only hosting schools from the Central Region, this tournament will only have a qualifying draw and a main draw.
To qualify for the main draw for singles, players will have to make the top 16 of the qualifying draw to move on and join other players who were selected to play in the main draw.
Of the eight Cyclones playing this weekend, freshman Gabriella Kellner and sophomore Gabriela Felix will start out in the singles qualifying draw, with junior Ashlee Narker, sophomore Julia Camblor, junior Stanislava Shulzhenko, sophomore Mari Paz Alberto Vilar and sophomore Suzanie Pretorius all starting in the main draw.
In doubles, Iowa State will be competing with four teams for the tournament, with Kellner and Pretorius teaming up, Shulzhenko and Alberto Vilar returning, Narker and Camblor making up the third team and junior Valeska San Martin Ramirez and Felix being the final team. Martin Ramirez will be competing only in doubles this weekend.
Doubles will just have a main draw. The draw has not been released yet.
This tournament will serve as the second qualifier for the NCAA Singles Championships and NCAA Doubles Championships, with players from the Central region competing to secure a spot in these tournaments.
Only the two singles finalists in the main draw will qualify for the singles championship, while for doubles, only the champion of the tournament will qualify for the doubles championship. Unlike the ITA All-American Championship, the consolation draw will not give players a route to qualify after losing.
The central region consists of competing schools from North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri and Arkansas.
This tournament marks one of the last possible ways to qualify, as the only qualifier left on the schedule after this one will be the Sectional Championships, which combine the Central, Texas and Midwest regions for one tournament.
Only players or doubles teams that have made deep runs in either the ITA All-American Championship or this upcoming ITA Regional Championship will be eligible to participate, while those who have already qualified for the NCAA Championships will also not be attending.
But to go to that tournament, the players who didn’t have a deep run in the All-American Championship will need to make a deep run in this Regional Championship to keep their chances at attending the NCAA Championships alive.
This tournament will also be Camblor, Narker, Shulzhenko and Alberto Vilar’s first time back in action since the ITA All-American Championship, where Alberto Vilar notably became the first Cyclone to ever make the main draw in that tournament.
This will also be the first ITA tournament that Felix, Kellner, Martin Ramirez and Pretorius will be attending this year, as they previously only played at the Husker Invitational and Cyclone Invite, where Pretorius did not lose a singles match at those tournaments, going 5-0 in singles matches and has a chance to improve her winning streak this week.
This tournament will run from Thursday to Monday. The doubles draw and qualifying singles will begin Thursday and the main draw in singles will begin Friday. The draws can be found here.
