AUBURN, Ala. – The Auburn women's tennis team is set for one of the top events of the fall season as the Tigers head to Baton Rouge, La., for the ITA Southern Regional Championships.
The tournament, hosted by LSU, runs Thursday-Tuesday at the LSU Tennis Complex with other matches played at the student recreation center on campus.
All eight student-athletes on the Auburn roster are set to compete. Freshman Caraline Scheufler and junior Lindsay Song will begin competition Thursday in the qualifying singles and doubles draws. The Tigers' other six players – freshmen Selin Ovunc and Carolyn Ansari, sophomore Yu Chen, junior Madeline Meredith and seniors Taylor Russo and Georgie Axon - will start their tournament Friday in the main draw of singles and doubles.
Three Auburn players earned seeds in the 64-player main singles draw. Ovunc is seeded 11th, Chen is seeded 15th and Meredith is seeded 16th. In addition, the team of Russo and Ovunc is the No. 6 seed in the main doubles draw.
Qualifying doubles play begins at 9 a.m. CT Thursday, followed by two rounds of qualifying singles. Main draw doubles and singles matches begin Friday.
The ITA Southern Region consists of schools in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. Student-athletes from 15 schools are slated to compete: Auburn, Alabama, LSU, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, UAB, McNeese, Tulane, Samford, ULM, Louisiana-Lafayette, Nicholls, Southern Miss, Troy, and Jacksonville State.
Main draw winners in both singles and doubles earn automatic berths to the ITA Fall Nationals, set for Nov. 6-10 in Newport Beach, Calif. Russo has earned bids to the event each of the last two seasons, finishing as the regional singles runner-up in 2017 and earning an at-large selection as part of a doubles team last season.
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