Hoos Advance in ITA Qualifying Round

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Our Virginia Men’s Tennis team is a pretty potent team. When the dust was settled after the first day of the qualifying round at the ITA All-America Championships, three Cavaliers stood tall: Houston Barrick (Brentwood, TN), Drew Courtney (Clifton, VA) and Lee Singer (Laguna Niguel, CA) all defeated their opening match opponents and are looking to repeat the process twice more in order to make the main draw.

Third-seeded (in qualifying) Barrick took down Kentucky’s Alex Musialek in three sets, each of which went to tiebreak. Courtney and No. 8 Singer each cruised to the next round in two, over Adam Baker of Vanderbilt and Skate Gorham of Brown, respectively. The three hope to be joining Showbiz Shabaz (Fairfax, VA) and Sanam Singh (Chandigarh, India), both of whom have already qualified for the main draw based on their rankings.

It wasn’t all fun and games though. Sadly, Jarmere Jenkins (College Park, GA) and Santiago Villegas (Bogota, Colombia) each lost in three, to Vandy’s Ryan Lipman and USC’s Daniel Nguyen, respectively.

Tomorrow is the next qualifying round. Keep an eye on your Hoos as Barrick takes on Radford’s Ivan Salec, Courtney takes on Jim Brouleau of New Mexico State, and Singer takes on Chris Thiemann of Ole Miss.