The Michigan women’s tennis team hosted the ITA Midwest Regional this weekend and had strong showings in both singles and doubles.
The tournament started on Thursday and will continue until Tuesday. It consists of a 64-player singles-qualifying draw, an eight-player singles-main draw and a 64-team-doubles draw.
First-year Michigan coach Ronnie Bernstein was excited because Ann Arbor has not hosted the tournament since 2000.
“We get to see most of the teams in our region and just get the girls matches,” Bernstein said. “We’ve been practicing a lot and it’s always good to get out and compete and not just against each other in practice.”
The Wolverines held their own against tough competition. Sophomore Tania Mahtani had an upset against Norte Dame’s 110th-ranked Colleen Rielley and advanced to the quarterfinals in singles. Michigan also sent two doubles teams to the third round and doubles pair Chisako Sugiyama and Whitney Taney advanced to the doubles quarterfinals where they lost to Northwestern duo Lui and Rose. Sugiyama was visibly frustrated during the match, but Taney remained calm and made several impressive volleys.
Bernstein was pleased with Sugiyama and Taney and hopes they can continue to work well together.
“Whitney is a freshmen . and she is a very good doubles player already,” Bernstein said. “They are both good at the net and they move forward and that makes a good doubles team. We are going to try them out in the fall and see how they do.”
Michigan also found success in singles competition. Junior Lindsey Howard had shoulder surgery roughly a year and a half ago and had not played in a singles match since May 2006. But she came out strong and won three straight games to qualify for the singles main draw.
“That was just awesome,” Bernstein said. “At the beginning of the semester, the shoulder wasn’t near where it needed to be and it’s really strengthened a lot this first month. (She played) good singles matches and the shoulder held up and she’s getting stronger and stronger. It shows that she really wants to be out there on the court and help us in anyway that she can.”
Howard, who wore ice bags on her shoulder between matches, will play her main-draw match against Illinois’ freshmen Marisa Lambropoulos and Mahtani will play her next singles match against 13th-seed Jacqueline Lee of Iowa.