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https://www.itatennis.com/ITA/Media/News2018/2018_Riviera_ITA_Women_s_All-American_Championships_-_Sunday_Recap.aspx

Gonzaga senior Sophie Whittle completed her improbable run from qualifier to champion, capturing the singles title at the 2018 Riviera ITA Women’s All-American Championships in a nearly three-hour marathon against Duke freshman Maria Mateas on Sunday, 6-4, 5-7, 6-3 at the Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades, California.

The victory for the recently turned 21-year-old Whittle from the Central Coast of California was her eighth consecutive win in six days as she became the second consecutive qualifier to win the ITA Women’s All-American singles title.

Gonzaga head women’s tennis coach D.J. Gurule called Whittle’s “Cinderella story” win an “amazing feat” and the greatest moment in the program’s tennis history for the small Roman Catholic school in Spokane, Wash., known as a national men’s basketball powerhouse from the West Coast Conference.

Sophie Whittle photo by Stormy Nesbit/ITA

The drama-filled singles final was in jeopardy of being completed when up a set but down 2-3, 15-40 on Mateas’ serve, Whittle stepped wrong on the baseline at the end of a Mateas point and went down to the ground holding her left ankle.

“I was running for a ball and I rolled it and felt it hit the ground,” Whittle said. “I didn’t want to stop. This was not the match to pull out of. I wanted to win so bad. Whenever I get hurt they have to force me to not play.”

The trainer was summoned, and a 15-minute medical timeout ensued. Whittle’s ankle was taped and she limped back onto the court.

“When I looked into her eyes when I got over to her I thought she was done,” Gurule said. “I was trying to get her to calm down and take deep breaths. We talk a lot in our program about controlling the things you can control, and this was something we couldn’t control. We had to let the doctors do what they do. After she walked it off, I asked what she thought and she said, ‘There’s no way you’re pulling me off this court’.”

When play did finally resume, Mateas double-faulted for the eighth time in the match to knot the score at 3-3.

“If I couldn’t control it I just tried to ignore it because if I would have focused on it I would have just gotten more frustrated about it,” Whittle said of the injury. “If I just tried to ignore it I was able to push forward.”

Mateas said the delay threw her off her game a bit, but she was still able to come back from down 4-5 and save two match points, tying the set at 5-all on a down-the-line forehand winner.

“I thought she was super hurt but then I saw that she was getting every ball back so I don’t know,” said Mateas, 19, who is ranked No. 311 in the WTA World Tour rankings and this past summer won her first ITF Pro Circuit Futures ($25,000) tournament. “I hope she’s fine but it didn’t look like she was super hurt after a while so I guess she’s good. It definitely deviated my focus a little bit, but that’s fine.”

Mateas, who was born in Romania and moved to New Jersey at age 6 and spent her formative junior tennis years in Massachusetts, was playing in her first college tournament and battled nerves with seven first-set double faults and a total of 10 in the match.

“My serve got me down a little bit, but I got it going near the end,”
said Mateas, the first Duke All-American finalist since Daniela Bercek in 2005. “My serve was not the problem. I just think she played a little bit better today.”

Mateas said once she split sets, she thought the match was hers. “One hundred percent,” she said. “But I was surprised at the level she was able to stay at for so long. I don’t think I did anything wrong. She was just better.”

Gurule joked that he might give Whittle an off day Monday.

“What she did out here was an amazing feat,” he said. “It’s just amazing. There’s really no other word for it. She’s just a beast. She’s passionate, she’s hard-headed. She’s everything you want in a player and a person. She’s the same way she is on the court than off.

“It’s a Cinderella story for sure. Gonzaga has that feeling. Gonzaga has this mentality that you just work hard. We don’t always have the blue-chip kids. We’re just going to out-work you and that’s what Sophie did today, and what’s she done the whole tournament. No matter where she was at mentally and physically.”

Gurule said the injury might have actually helped Whittle coming when it did in the match.

“I thought it might help her be a little more aggressive,” he said. “I was a little frustrated because she was being a little timid and realizing she was going to have trouble tracking down some balls, I was hoping it would make her a little more aggressive. I thought she did a really good job of that.”

In the third set, Whittle broke Mateas’ serve for a 4-2 lead, and then came back down love-40 on her serve to get the hold for the 5-2 lead. After a Mateas hold, Whittle served out the match.

In the doubles final, the University of Kansas senior duo of Nina Khmelnitckaia and Janet Koch defeated Stanford’s Caroline Lampl and Kimberly Yee, 6-3, 6-2. The Jayhawks had two teams advance to the quarterfinals of the main draw and it was the first time in school history they had a team advance past the quarterfinal round at the All-American.

Khmelnitckaia and Koch won the Oracle ITA National Summer Championships Powered by UTR at TCU earning the spot in the main draw. Khmelnitckaia and Koch played their entire freshman year together but have had different partners the last two years before deciding this summer to player their senior year with each other.

“When we got the first break in the second set, we knew we had the confidence to close it out,” said Khmelnitckaia.

The University of Miami’s Estela Perez-Somarriba lived up to her top-seeding in the singles consolation bracket, taking the final over Sara Castellano of Wisconsin, 6-1, 6-4. In the doubles consolation final, Stanford’s Michaela Gordon and Emily Arbuthnott beat Megan Kauffman and Lauren Proctor of Winthrop University, 8-3.

For final draws, photo gallery and main draw recaps, visit the Riviera Women’s All-American Championships event page .

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https://www.itatennis.com/ITA/Media/News2018/2018_Riviera_ITA_Women_s_All-American_Championships_-_Friday_Recap.aspx

PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. – Gonzaga University senior Sophie Whittle finished a five-minute stretch and headed out for a jog around the outer courts Friday after her sixth singles win in four days at the 2018 Riviera ITA Women’s All-American Championships.

Gonzaga head women’s tennis coach D.J. Gurule watched and shook his head in amazement at what the qualifier Whittle has accomplished since Tuesday in becoming the first Bulldogs players to reach a main draw in any ITA Grand Slam event.

Gonzaga’s Sophie Whittle

“She’s our hardest worker and now the hard work is paying off,” said Gurule, after Whittle became the day’s first singles semifinalist in a near flawless effort in beating Duke’s Kelly Chen, 6-2, 6-4. Earlier in the day, Whittle needed three sets to beat fellow qualifier Kenya Jones of Georgia Tech, 1-6, 6-2, 6-4.

“I feel OK,” said Whittle, letting out a huge smile minutes after her win, who has now played a total of eight matches since Tuesday with two losses in doubles. “I’m tired, but excited to be here and playing like this.”

Just a week ago, Whittle was playing in the main draw of a USTA Pro Circuit $60,000 tournament as a wild-card entry near her hometown in the Central Coast Pro Tennis Open 200 miles north of Pacific Palisades when she fell to former Wimbledon Junior singles finalist Anne Li.

“It’s just so different than last week,” said Whittle, who opened up with a 4-0 lead against Southern California resident Chen and never looked back. “Just being here with my doubles partner and my coach and last week I was just on my own.”

On the next court over from Whittle was Chen’s new Blue Devils’ teammate freshman Maria Mateas, who is kicking off her college career this week and is currently ranked No. 311 in the WTA World Tour rankings. Like Whittle, Mateas also played in the main draw of last week’s USTA Pro Circuit tournament on the Central Coast falling 7-6 in a third set in the first round.

“This is a different vibe for me in general,” said Mateas, after beating one of her best friends from the juniors and fellow Massachusetts resident Emma Davis of Wake Forest, 6-4, 6-0. “I’ve been playing mostly on the pro tour for the past two years so I definitely have expectations. But everyone is so good here too.”

And that would include Matteas’ semifinal opponent and top-seeded Makenna Jones from the University of North Carolina as Jones looked impressive in beating No. 7-seeded Katarina Jokic of Georgia, 6-1, 6-1, in her quarterfinal, but had a tougher time earlier in the day eliminating LSU’s Eden Richardson, 7-6 (7), 7-5.

Defending Riviera All-American singles champion Fernanda Contreras moved one step closer to a repeat title as the No. 6-seeded Contreras sent Kansas’ Anastasia Rychagova home from SoCal for the second straight year rolling to a 6-1, 6-1 win.

“It was a lot closer than the score,” said Contreras, a native of Mexico who spent her high school years training in Austin, Texas. “I was focusing on keeping my toss up on the serve because of the windy conditions. Last year was a grind when I beat her here in three sets.”

It was the fifth consecutive ITA major where Contreras – the first Commodores player to win at Riviera – has gotten to the semifinals or better.

The doubles semifinals will move to a best-out-of-three set format on Saturday. A day after upsetting the top-seeded team, the University of Kansas duo of Nina Khmelnitckaia and Janet Koch advanced to the final four with an 8-6 win over the No. 6 Arizona State team of

Lauryn John-Baptiste and Ilze Hattingh. They next face Wichita State’s Fatima Bizhukova and Marta Bellucco after singles play concludes.

In the other semifinal it will be the unseeded Stanford team of Caroline Lampl and Kimberly Yee facing the No. 7 seeded team of Sofia Blanco and Lisa Marie Rioux of Oklahoma State. The Cowgirl team got past the unseeded University of Kansas team of Anastasia Rychagova and Sonia Smagina, 8-3, while Lampl-Yee beat No. 5 seeds Eden Richardson and Jessica Golovin of Louisiana State.

For updated draws, schedules, live scoring and video, photo gallery and main draw recaps, visit the Riviera Women’s All-American Championships event page .

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Jones drew 2017-18 ITA Doubles All-American and former US Open Junior doubles champion Jada Hart, a redshirt UCLA junior, who had the decided home-court advantage playing on the lower Riviera Country Club courts located just five miles down Sunset Blvd. from the Bruins campus in Westwood.

UCLA’s Jada Hart. Photo by Stormy Nesbit/ITA

The Greenville, S.C., resident Jones, a junior who led the Tar Heels to the 2018 ITA National Indoor Team Championship, came out strong posting a 6-0 first-set blanking over Hart, before Hart rallied to capture the second set, 6-4, with Jones closing it out by the same 6-4 score to advance to the Round of 16 Friday at the event being held at the same location in Pacific Palisades for the 34^th consecutive year.

An ITA All-American in singles, Jones will next face Louisiana State’s Eden Richardson on Friday. The unseeded Richardson got past the University of Michigan’s Kate Fahey, 6-3, 6-2, and later in the day advanced to the doubles quarterfinals with Tigers’ partner Jessica Golovin.

“I thought I played pretty well all the way through, especially since I was so nervous playing in this event for the first time,” said Richardson, 20, a sophomore from near Liverpool, England. “I’ve never been to California and can’t believe how nice it is here.”

Oklahoma State’s Katarina Stresnakova pulled off the upset of the day as the Slovakina Cowgirl senior beat No. 2-seeded Estela Perez-Somarriba from the University of Miami, 7-6 (4), 1-6, 6-3.

Perez-Somarriba was one of three top-eight seeded players to lose first-round matches Thursday as Meible Chi of Duke took out No. 3 Carla Touly of Florida State University, 6-3, 6-1, and Stanford University’s Emily Arbuthnott needed three sets to beat No. 8-seeded Marie Leduc of Clemson, 2-6, 7-6 (5), 6-2.

Syracuse University’s Gabriela Knutson is the tournament’s No. 5-seed and is playing her fourth consecutive Riviera All-American. She posted a 6-4, 6-2 win over UC-Berkeley sophomore Julia Rosenqvist. “My freshman year I played qualies in doubles, second year main draw doubles and last year qualies in singles and main draw doubles,” the senior from the Czech Republic said. “I’m familiar with the scenery and this is my favorite tournament of my entire year.”

Half of the No. 2-seeded doubles team, Knutson and partner Miranda Ramirez, were taken out later in the day by the University of Kansas team of Anastasia Rychagova and Sonia Smagina, 8-6.

Knutson next meets unseeded Emma Davis of Wake Forest University. Davis, who grew up in Boston, said she was unaware of her opponent Veronica Miroshnichenko of Loyola Marymount. “It kind of helps not knowing who you are playing because you have a fresh mindset and not knowing their strengths and weaknesses you can just play your own game,” she said.

In a doubles upset, unseeded Fernanda Contreras and Summer Dvorak from the University of Tennessee beat UNLV’s No. 3-seeded team of En-Pei Huang and Aiwen Zhu, 8-5.

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Its very exciting to have Sylmar Rec Center introduce tennis programming in their community.

They have two beautiful courts with lights ready to go and service all the juniors in the area.

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The theme was Back To School, and with the help of The City of Inglewood, Chargers, Lakers, Clippers, Bj’s, and the SCTA, over 75 kids had a blast on and off the court.

Each child went home with a brand new backpack filled with school supplies and participated in tennis, an obstacle course, face painting, off court games, and enjoyed free food! 

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Congrats TEAM So Cal!

• Julieta Pareja
• Maria  Aytoyan
• Iva Jovic
• Kenzie Nguyen
• Rishvanth Krishna
• Andrew Johnson
• Brayden Tallakson
• Tadevos Mirijanyan

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In addition to playing for the All-American national title, players will be competing for a berth into the 2018 Oracle ITA National Fall Championships, which takes place November 7-11, in Surprise, Arizona. Singles quarterfinalists, consolation singles champion and finalist, along with doubles semifinalists and consolation doubles champion and finalist advance to the end of fall national championship.

With a long tradition of excellence at the ITA Women’s All American Championships it is no surprise that plenty of former winners are now competing on the WTA Tour including Danielle Collins (2015, Virginia); Jamie Loeb (2013, North Carolina); Nicole Gibbs (2011 doubles, Stanford); Irina Falconi (2009 singles and 2008 doubles, Georgia Tech).

SCTA Board member, Dr. Fred Ho, is the founder of this event. After 34 years of excellence, the tournament will have a new home in 2019, so don’t miss the opportunity to watch some fantastic women’s collegiate tennis!

More information, including Draws, is available at http://www.r2sports.com/website/event-website.asp?TID=29455.

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