Women's Tennis Heads To Texas This Weekend

Oct. 11, 2007

CORAL GABLES, Fla. –The University of Miami women’s tennis team heads to Midland, Texas this weekend to take on opponents from some of the nation’s top tier teams at the 2007 Racquet Club Collegiate Invitational, Oct. 12-14.

“The team is definitely ready to play,” head coach Paige Yaroshuk-Tews said. “The team is definitely ready to finally get out there and compete. We had Caren Seenauth, Romy Farah and Laura Vallverdu competing the last two weeks but we have quite a few girls here that have been training really hard and have been preparing really well for the first tournament of the fall.”

Vallverdu is coming off a strong performance in Los Angeles where she reached the quarterfinal round of the main draw at the 2007 Riviera/ITA Women’s All-American Championships last weekend. After defeating UCLA’s Tracy Lin and Vanderbilt’s Amanda Taylor to advance into the quarterfinal round, Vallverdu fell just short of reaching the semi-finals before a tough, hard-fought loss to Georgia Tech’s Amanda McDowell, 5-7, 7-5, 7-6 (9).

Farah and Seenauth reached the final pre-qualifying round of doubles play at the championships before falling to the Illinois duo of Megan Fudge and Leah Finnegan, 8-5. In singles play, Farah fell in the first round of pre-qualifying action while Seenauth reached the second round before falling to Aurelija Miseviciute of Arkansas, 6-0, 6-2.

In addition to Vallverdu, Seenauth and Farah, the Hurricanes return Gina Sabatino and Claudia Wasilewski from last year’s squad while welcoming two newcomers this fall, freshmen Bianca Eichkorn and Michaela Kissell.

“We’re starting a little later than most teams and we’ve done that in order to make sure we are strong and prepared for our first tournament,” Yaroshuk-Tews said. “We’re finally excited to see everyone compete at the same venue.”

After this weekend’s action, the team will turn its attention to the ITA Regionals set to take place Oct. 20-23 in Athens, Ga.