I promised an ITA South Regional recap and have procrastinated in typical ASW fashion, but on this fine Monday I will attempt to bust it out. The South Regional took place last weekend (9/27-9/29) in Rome, GA and as usual, Emory took both singles and doubles draws. Freshman Alexa Goetz was the star of the weekend, taking the singles tournament by beating a bunch of her teammates in the final rounds and partnering with Christina Watson to take the doubles title, again by beating a bunch of their teammates in the final rounds. Since this is going to be a quick and dirty stream of consciousness recap, I’m just going to bullet point my thoughts below
- We’ll start with the elephant in the room. Where was Ysabel Gonzalez-Rico? Is she studying abroad? Injured? Will this have implications for the spring?
- Alexa Goetz definitely had to earn this championship by taking out teammates Defne Olcay and Emma Cartledge in the semifinals and finals, respectively, but I’m honestly not sold on her as a big gun yet. This isn’t her fault by any means, I just don’t think we’ve seen enough play against other top 1s and 2s. Do I think she has the potential to win the ITA Cup? Absolutely. Do I think she should play ahead of YGR in the spring (if YGR is healthy)? Absolutely not.
- Given the vast improvement we’ve seen from Olcay in the past two years I was a little hopeful that she would be able to win the tournament in YGR’s absence. Olcay ended last year at the #3 spot in the Eagle’s singles lineup and put in a huge amount of work to pick up regular season wins against CMS and Wesleyan for her team. If she stays at the same spot this year she will easily be one of the best #3s in the country.
- For someone as good as she is, Emma Cartledge loses a lot of sets 0-6 (including the final set in her finals match). I get that this is just the nature of her game but imagine how much better she could be if she could reel in her aggressive shots just a little when the situation demanded it. This isn’t meant to be negative criticism, I quite like Cartledge’s game and I don’t want to see her lose another set 6-0.
- Moving on from Emory, let’s focus on Sewanee. After their worst ranking year in a very long time in 2019, ending the year ranked #30, I was admittedly not very hopeful that they would scare Emory in this tournament. Their two strongest showings in the singles draw were Catherine Owen and Freshman Emma Smith, who both made the quarterfinals before bowing out to Olcay and Watson. Based on Sewanee’s performance in this tournament, I can’t say I see them moving into the Top 15 or even Top 20. However, the addition of Smith will be good for the Tigers’ depth. Maybe Top 25.
- Junior Catherine Owen remains very solid for Sewanee and continues to consistently play well for the Tigers. Although her doubles performance with Ellie Czura left a little to be desired (falling in second round), I’m confident Owen will retain her top spot in the Sewanee lineup.
- Fariza Abdulloeva is NC Wesleyans #1 singles player who was a bit of an enigma last year given NC Wesleyans D3 schedule, which didn’t allow Abdulloeva to get much competition against the highly ranked D3 players. During our discussion about the NCAA Singles tournament qualifiers/should-be qualifiers, her name was mentioned as she had some good wins over Emory at regionals in Fall 2018. This year, unfortunately, she bowed out of Emory’s Lauren Yoon in R32, so the NCAA Singles tournament isn’t looking to be too likely…
Overall, this tournament didn’t prove anything for me. Emory has a phenomenal new player in Goetz, but will have a similar lineup to last year (with Goetz replacing Daniela Lopez, likely at or around #2 singles). Do I think they’re title contenders? Definitely, unless for some reason YGR isn’t back. How confident am I that they’ll win NCAAs? Not very. For the other teams, Sewanee faltering against players from the #3 team in the nation isn’t unexpected, and I don’t think it should dishearten them before spring. They have a lot of room to move up in the rankings, and fortunately for them they’re in a spot where they don’t have much to lose. Otherwise, there weren’t any big breakthrough players at the Rome Regional.
And that’s all I have to say about that. Nothing groundbreaking. However, given the overall lack of competitiveness that we’ve seen at regionals this year, here’s to hoping that the ITA Cup will provide some much needed excitement in the fall season. Stay tuned for a blogger group prediction piece (if we can all manage to get our sh*t together for like 2 hours). Until then, stay classy San Diego.
-ASW