Season Stats: Women | Men

Brackets: Women | Men

 

April 24, 2009 – With regional implications on the line, the Truman tennis teams travel to Kansas City tomorrow and Sunday for the annual MIAA Championships. The event will be held at the Plaza Tennis Center and will feature a six-team bracket on the men’s side and a nine-team women’s bracket.

 

The MIAA sits in a precarious situation on the women’s side, as none of the conference’s teams found themselves in the top-eight of the most recent NCAA South Central regional poll. Truman (15-4) was one of four MIAA teams ranked 9th-12th, falling in at the No. 10 spot behind Washburn but in front of Nebraska-Omaha and Northwest Missouri State. Washburn secured the MIAA tournament’s No. 1 seed with an 8-0 conference mark, while Truman, UNO and Northwest will have a pre-tournament draw on Friday night to determine the Nos. 2-4 seeds. All three squads finished conference play at 6-2 and exhausted all other tiebreakers (all three lost to WU but split with each other).

 

Truman has trotted out the same seven players for the duration of the season, with seniors Lindsy Blair (22-8, 4-4 MIAA) and Courtney Walther (22-8, 6-2) setting the tone at Nos. 1 and 2 singles, while sophomore Amy Ochs (22-8, 5-3), freshmen Ellen Russell (23-4, 6-1) and Dagmar Velez (18-10, 4-3), and sophomore Kelsey Kuykendall (25-4, 7-0) round out the top six. Blair and Walther, Ochs and Russell, and Kuykendall and sophomore Anna Greenwald, round out the probable doubles lineup.

 

The Bulldog men (7-5) will need to piece together three straight wins and secure the tournament championship to likely have any chance of reaching the NCAA tournament for the sixth straight season. The squad wasn’t listed in the top-nine of this week’s most recent regional poll – which had three MIAA schools represented (Washburn, Northwest Missouri, Southwest Baptist). Truman enters as the tournament’s No. 4 seed and will face 5th-seeded Emporia State in the first-round on Saturday. The winner will take on top-seeded Washburn in the semifinals later in the day.

 

Junior Kyle Schlotz (7-12, 1-4 MIAA) was the only Bulldog men’s player to see action in all five MIAA matches this season, while sophomore Colin Boswell (9-8, 2-2), junior Peter Bracha (5-7, 1-3), junior Steven Hipkiss ((7-11, 2-2) and junior John Rothfusz (8-5 ,1-3) each missed one match apiece. The sixth starting spot in singles play will likely come down to either freshman Eric McCullough (10-5, 2-1) or junior Ben Rusk (2-2, 0-1).

 

Meanwhile, the doubles lineup on the men’s side is likely more set in stone, with Rothfusz and Scholtz pairing up at No. 1 and Hipkiss and Bracha teaming up at No. 2. Rusk and McCullough played together four times in MIAA play at the No. 3 spot, while Rusk paired with Boswell the one other time.

 

Each tournament round consists of a regular team dual match with doubles play going first in front of the six singles matches. The first team to score five points is declared the winner, and the rest of the match will be left unfinished.

 

The tournament will be played out to determine all places, and, in the event of rain, may be moved to a local indoor tennis facility. Should that occur, all current and subsequent consolation rounds would be cancelled.