Oct. 18, 2009
WACO, Texas -
Three of Texas A&M's women's doubles teams have advanced to the quarterfinals of the ITA Texas Regional at the Waco Regional Tennis Center.
A&M's Elzé Potgieter and Nazari Urbina are the No. 4 seed and will go up against No. 2 seed Amanda Craddock and Krista Damico of Texas on Monday at 10 a.m. The Aggies, who received a first-round bye, reached the quarterfinal round by defeating Rebekka Hanle and Varsha Shiva Shankar of Rice, 8-2, and knocking off Bianca Discordia and Leanne Mascall of Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, 8-1.
Stephanie Davidson and Sheri Olivier defeated Nikola Matovicova and Katarina Micochova of UTA, 8-4, in the first round before blanking Claudia Hidalgo and Chanelle McGregor of SMU, 8-0 in the second round. The Aggie tandem then defeated No. 8 seed Julie Chao and Ana Guzman of Rice, 8-5, in the round of 16 to advance to the quarterfinals, where they will face Irina Paraschiv and Madura Ranganathan of North Texas on Monday at 10 a.m. at the Baylor Tennis Center.
A&M's Morgan Frank and Lauren Santacroce will take on No. 7 seed Vanja Corovic and Sarah Lancaster in the quarterfinals at 10 a.m. on Monday. The Aggies received a first-round bye and then topped Sarah Adams and Micaela Silva of Texas-San Antonio, 8-2, on Saturday in the Round of 32. Today the Aggie duo topped No. 4 seed Kayla Duncan and Katarina Tuohimaa of TCU, 8-3.
A&M's other duo of Ashley Turpin reached the round of 16 before being eliminated by Texas' duo of Corovic and Lancaster, 8-5. The Aggies had defeated Nicole Briceno and Shahazoda Hatamova of SMU, 8-5, on Saturday and held off Natalie Leitch and Stefanie Peana of Texas Tech today in the round of 32.
In singles, Potgieter, Davidson and Frank all reached the round of 16 in the main draw before being eliminated.
Potgieter, the No. 7 seed, topped Mirna Cicak of Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, 6-1, 4-6, 6-1 but then fell to Texas' Damico, who had knocked off Santacroce in three sets in the round of 32. Damico dropped the first set to Potgieter but rallied to win, 2-6, 7-5, 6-3.
Frank defeated Irina Paraschiv of North Texas, 6-1, 7-6 (3) in the round of 32 but was unable to upset No. 2 seed Marta Lesniak of SMU, falling 0-6, 6-2, 6-2 in the round of 16.
Davidson defeated Karolina Filipiak of Baylor, 7-6 (4), 4-6, 6-4, today in the round of 32 before falling to No. 8 seed Nina Secerbegovic of Baylor, 6-2, 6-0.
In the single consolation bracket, Urbina picked up two victories today to reach the quarterfinals of the west bracket. She faces Abby Liu of Texas Monday at 11:30 a.m.
Santacroce picked up a 6-1, 6-4 victory over Cicak, and Olivier got the win after Guzman retired in the second set with an injury.
Cuthbertson suffered a 6-4, 6-7 (5), 1-0 (7) loss to Joanna Kacprzyk of Houston in the first round of the west consolation and came back to get a 6-4, 6-3 victory over Alina Shazhko of Stephen F. Austin in the first round of the south bracket.
The tournament concludes on Tuesday. The singles finalists and the doubles champion earn an automatic berth into the prestigious ITA National Indoor Championships, Nov. 5-8 in New Haven, Conn.