Women?s Tennis Opens Play at ITA Carolina Regionals Thursday

CLEMSON, SC – The Clemson women’s tennis team will travel to Chapel Hill, NC for the ITA Carolina Regional Championships this week. The regionals feature players from all schools in North and South Carolina in a singles and doubles draw, and is historically one of the strongest regions nationally, including three of the top-15 in the final poll last season.  Play begins on Thursday with the qualifying singles round and the Main Draw doubles, and continues through the championship matches on Sunday. Regional winners advance to ITA Individual Indoor National Championships in Flushing, NY. Carola Pederzani will compete in the Qualifying singles draw, beginning at 1:00 pm on Thursday. Ani Miao and Joana Eidukonyte will play Thursday at 4:30 pm in the first round of the doubles main draw.  The duo of Jessy Rompies and Beatrice Gumulya are the No. 3 seed in the doubles draw, while Yana Koroleva and Tristen Dewar are 5-8 seeds. Both of those duos will get underway on Friday after earning first-round byes.  Rompies and Gumulya, both natives of Jakarta, Indonesia, have played together for more than a decade, and claimed two ITF events during the summer. Dewar and Koroleva were paired together last season ten times, going 5-5. However they knocked off the No. 6 duo in the nation from Vanderbilt during the Furman Fall Classic in September.  Koroleva will likely be the top seed in singles, as she enters the weekend ranked No. 7 nationally in singles. Gumulya, ranked 34th, is Clemson’s only other player ranked in singles.  Players from Clemson have claimed seven singles titles all-time and three doubles titles. Josipa Bek was last to claim the title in 2009, while she and Keri Wong claimed the doubles title in 2010 and 2011. The other doubles title went to current assistant coach Maria Brito, who won with All-American Julie Coin in 2003.