Collegiate tennis is back south of the border!
The fall part of the NCAA tennis schedule is all about tournaments, so the format more closely resembles the professional circuit with players going from place to place, competing in standard knockout draws.
Let’s catch up with the latest news from Canadians competing in the NCAA.
Regional Championships
Among the tournaments on the calendar are the regional championships, which is where the Canadians in NCAA saw some of their best results.
Mélodie Collard of the University of Virginia had the strongest showing at the DI Women’s Atlantic Regional Championships, winning the doubles title with Elaine Chervinsky. The pair lost just 19 games in five matches, including an 8-0 bagel in the quarter-finals (doubles matches in the pre-semifinal rounds were just a single set, first to eight games), and capped off their run with a 6-4, 6-1 over their teammates at Virginia, second seeds Margaret Navarro and Sara Ziodato, in the final.
Annabelle Xu, also of Virginia, was the top seed in the singles and reached the semis, where she lost to eighth seed Ozlem Uslu of Virginia Tech.
Across the continent at the DI Northwest Regional Championships, a pair of Canadians at the University of Washington went on impressive runs.
Reece Carter, who entered the 2024-2025 season ranked No. 60 in women’s singles, reached the semifinals. She did it the hard way, winning three-setters in her second-round, third-round, and quarter-finals matches, with two of those wins coming from a set down. She finally ran out of gas in the final four against top seed Connie Ma of Stanford.
In doubles, Carter teamed up with fellow Canadian Alexia Jacobs to form the top-seeded tandem. They cruised into the semifinals with the loss of just six games (in three pro sets) before falling 10-7 in a match tiebreak in the final four to the fourth seeds.
All-American Championships
The first major event on the calendar took place at the end of September, the 2024 ITA All-American Championships.
Canada’s best results once again came in the doubles, where Jessica Alsola of the University of California, Berkeley, reached the semifinal with partner Mao Mushika. The pair upset the third seeds from Ohio State in the first round in straight sets.
They picked up three more wins, two in straight sets, before falling to Kimmi Hance and Elise Wagle of UCLA.
Hance and Wagle were Canadian slayers at the All-American championships as they took out Carter and Jacobs in the quarter-finals before beating Alsola in the semis.
The University of Washington’s Canadian duo kicked off their tournament by upsetting the top seeds from Oklahoma State in the first round and then snuck past a team from the University of South Carolina in the second round before bowing out in the last eight.
Collard and her partner Elaine Chervinsky were the second seeds but lost in round two
Singles was not as successful for the Canadians. Six were in the main draw but only two, Collard and Xu, managed a match win. Both lost in the second round.
The highlight on the men’s side came courtesy of Jaden Weekes. Despite going out in the second round of singles, he actually picked up six match wins at the event. The Kentucky Wildcat came through prequalifying and qualifying without dropping a set in five matches just to get into the main draw.
Click here to view all the Canadian rankings in the NCAA.
