September 14, 2012

Women’s Tennis Opens 2012 Fall Season at UVA and Elon Invitationals

GREENSBORO, N.C. – UNCG's women's tennis program opens its 2012 fall season this weekend sending half of the team to Charlottesville, Va., for the UVA Fall Invitational and the other half to Elon, N.C., for the Elon Invitational Friday September 14 - Sunday September 16. Play will begin each day at 9 a.m. in Charlottesville, while the Elon tournament will be under-way at 11 a.m.

"The kids that are going to UVA, it's a tough tournament," said head coach Jeff Trivette. "We have a lot of ACC teams, nationally ranked teams and nationally ranked kids so it's an opportunity for us to knock some people off. I think we'll see more SoCon teams at the tournament at Elon, and it will be a good test for the freshman coming in."

Ten teams will participate in the three-day individual tournament at the UVA Fall Invitational. The teams include host Virginia, Furman, Marshall, Old Dominion, South Carolina, VCU, Wake Forest, William & Mary Winthrop and our UNCG Spartans.

The UVA tournament consists of 16-player singles draws and 16-team doubles draws. The teams will start off the tournament Friday with one round of doubles prefacing two rounds of singles. Saturday's schedule will consist of two rounds of doubles followed by one round of singles. Sunday will conclude the tournament with the final round of doubles followed by the final round of singles.

Annette Rios, Alex Whitehead, Niltooli Wilkins and Dilara Yurtkuran will represent the Spartans in Charlottesville.

Nine teams will be competing at the Elon Invitational. The teams include host Elon, Campbell, Western Carolina, NC Central, Virginia Tech, USC Upstate, NC A&T, Meredith and UNCG.

The Elon Invitational begins the tournament with singles and go into doubles later in the afternoon.

Sourneya Anane, Alisha Burton, Amy Ellis, Stephanie Falcon, Kayla Gammie and Jamie Grinberg will represent UNCG in Elon.

Last season at the UVA Invitational, Niltooli Wilkins, Lucy Dougherty, Devon Sutherland and Stephanie Falcon represented the Spartans. Wilkins picked up a pair of singles victories and three doubles wins, including a victory over the ninth-ranked doubles team from host Virginia. Wilkins and Dougherty lost in the A Doubles final, while Sutherland and Falcon fell in the finals of the B doubles flight.

The Spartans have five more fall tournaments before starting the spring season in January: the Wake Forest Invitational, the Charlotte 49ers Invite, the Duckworth Fall Tennis Classic in Clemson, S.C., the ITA Carolina Regional in Winston-Salem and the Kitty Harrison Invitational in Chapel Hill.

- UNCG -