After a successful Mountain Lion Invitational last weekend, the Young Harris College men's and women's tennis teams travel to Sumter, South Carolina, this weekend (Sept. 27-30) to compete in the ITA Southeast Regional Championships.
The tournament, which will be played at the Palmetto Tennis Center, opens up with doubles play starting Friday (Sept. 27) morning with singles play following shortly afterwards. Over 8,000 student-athletes from NCAA Division I, II, III, NAIA, junior and community colleges compete across 85 ITA Regional Championships around the country.
Young Harris qualified six on the men's side: Ignacio Ascarrunz, Kash Reddiyar, Romeo Luque, Miguel Danelon, John Brett, and Herman Ronnberg. On the women's side, Young Harris qualified Ana Rodriguez, Juli Boerr, Jing Dong, and Carol Quevedo.
"It's obviously great to qualify eight players in the singles and five doubles pairings," said YHC head coach Andrew Cobb. "This is a really competitive tournament in both singles and doubles but we have some great first-round matchups on Friday. I know the players have been looking forward to this tournament since we started fall play which is always a good mentality to have going into a regional tournament."
In the first round of doubles on Friday, the duo of Rodriguez and Dong take on Eduarda Ferreira and Polina Radchenko from Lander University, while Quevedo and Boerr take on the fifth seed Kristina Baran and Beatriz Lopez from Columbus State University. On the men's side, the doubles pair of Brett and Ronnberg take on Matthew De Groot and Jamieson Nathan of Lander . The second Young Harris pair - Ascarrunz and Reddiyar - take on Thembo Makhanya and Lucas Sasaki of Emmanuel (Ga.) College, while the third doubles pair for the Mountain Lions - Danelon and Luque - take on Luca Kirchoff and Marcel Schomburg of Newberry College.
Going into the afternoon's singles play, Quevedo takes on Iva Jankovic of Southern Wesleyan University, Rodriguez takes on Elliott Peterson of Belmont Abbey College, Boerr takes on Africa Mota of Tusculum University, while Dong takes on Nelli Lius of Lander . On the men's side, Ascarrunz takes on Liam Day of Francis Marion University, Reddiyar takes on Marcel Agbegne of Limestone College, Luque takes on Rodrigo Carvalho of Flagler College, while Danelon earned the ninth seed and received a first-round bye.
