Oct. 21, 2008

SAN DIEGO -

Singles Bracket | Doubles Bracket

The San Diego State women's tennis team will be back in action this weekend as it makes the short trip to Barnes Tennis Center for the Wilson/ITA West Regional Championships, Oct. 23-27. Along with the University of San Diego, SDSU will serve as co-host of the 16-team tournament which gets underway on Thursday with first-round doubles matches beginning at 8:30 a.m.

The frontrunners of this weekend's competition will gain automatic berths into the ITA National Indoor Championships, Nov. 6-9, in Charlottesville, Va.

Two Aztec tandems are scheduled to play their first doubles matches on Thursday morning. Seniors Esther Cadua and Milana Yusupov will take on Long Beach State's Deborah Armstrong and Lisa Sutton, while freshman Emma Cioffi will team up with sophomore Olivia Colman to battle Jordan Heitzner and Brittany Rosen of UCLA.

Senior Holly Bagshaw and sophomore Julia Trunk, who are seeded ninth in the tournament, received a first-round bye, along with the Aztec freshman sister duo of Roxanne and Sierra Ellison. Both pairs will begin their quest for the doubles title in the round of 32 on Friday morning.

In singles, three Aztecs are slated to kick off first-round action at 9:30 a.m. Cadua is matched up against Angelia De Miestre of Pepperdine, Sierra Ellison will tangle with UCLA's Heitzner and Roxanne Ellison will square off against Ali Van Horne of Arizona State.

At approximately 10 a.m., Colman will battle Arizona's Jane Huh, while Cioffi is scheduled to take on another Wildcat, Deborah Castany, at 11 a.m.

Trunk, Bagshaw and Yusupov, meanwhile, received a bye and will begin play in the round of 64 in the afternoon. Trunk, who advanced to the semifinals of the ITA West Regionals last year, is the No. 17 seed and will hit the courts at 12:30 p.m., along with Yusupov. Fourteenth-seeded Bagshaw will then wrap up the Aztecs' opening day with a match at 2 p.m.

In addition to SDSU, the tournament will feature some of the elite Division I women's tennis players from Arizona, California, Hawaii and Nevada. ASU's Kelcy McKenna is the top seed in the singles draw, while fellow Sun Devils Nadia and Laila Abdala are the No. 1 seed out of 46 doubles teams.