Nicole Bartnik will represent the women’s tennis team in the 2009 Riviera/ITA Women’s All-American Championship this weekend as a participant in the prequalifying draw for singles. In addition, Bartnik and junior Natasha Makarova are listed as alternates for the prequalifying draw for doubles. The tournament, located in Pacific Palisades, Calif., is the first national event of the 2009-2010 season.
The tournament features six rounds of prequalifying and qualifying matches. The championship is being hosted by the Riviera Tennis Club for the 25th consecutive year. The top overall seed at the tournament is Maria Mosolova from Northwestern University. Mosolova was the 2008 ITA National Women’ s Player to Watch, and finished the season No. 2 in the rankings.
Bartnik is coming off a tremendous performance in the Cissie Leary Invitational, where she reached the finals as the No. 3 seed in her first collegiate tournament. Bartnik advanced to the finals beating players from Yale, Purdue, and Penn. In the finals she faced Yevgenia Stupak from East Tennessee, the tournament’s No. 1 overall seed. Stupak easily defeated an exhausted Bartnik, who had to fight through a third-set tiebreak win over Elizabeth Epstein from Yale in the semifinals.
In the doubles draw at the Cissie Leary Invitational, Makarova and Bartnik were awarded the No. 3 seed. The pair advanced to the semifinals, defeating a team from Penn 8-3. They next beat a duo from Purdue before falling to a team from Yale 8-3 in the semifinals.
The team of Makarova and Bartnik is currently listed as the final team of alternates for the prequalifying doubles draw. The alternate list consists of 11 teams including the Lions duo, and Bartnik and Makarova are currently the only team that has not been accepted into the tournament.
The Lions will see some familiar faces in California, as two players from Ivy rivals Princeton and Dartmouth will also be taking part in the event. Hilary Bartlett and Taylor Marable from Princeton are entered as a team in the qualifying draw for doubles. The duo is coming off a heartbreaking loss at the Georgia Tech Invitational two weeks ago to No. 35 Gabriela Mejia and Laura Vallverdu from Miami. The Princeton team lost 9-8, falling 7-4 in a tiebreak.
Bartlett, a sophomore, is entered in the prequalifying draw for the singles competition as well, alongside Bartnik. For Dartmouth, junior Molly Scott is the No. 10 seed in the qualifying draw for the singles competition. Senior Mary Beth Winingham is entered in the prequalifying draw alongside her two Ivy rivals. Finally, the two Dartmouth players teamed up and were selected to take part in the prequalifying draw for doubles as well.
The prequalifying draw is scheduled to take place Oct. 3 and 4 at UCLA, with the qualifying and singles taking place from Oct. 6 to 11 at the Riviera Tennis Club.
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