Four members of the Emory University women's tennis team: freshman Alexa Goetz, sophomores Christina Watson, Emma Cartledge and junior Defne Olcay will represent the Eagles at this week's ITA Cup which will be held at the Rome Tennis Center in Rome, GA from Thursday, October 17th through Sunday, October 20th.
In a new look format for 2019, the ITA Cup will feature the nine singles and doubles automatic qualifiers from the nine regions as well as the seven finalists from the Central, Midwest, Northeast, New England, South, Southeast & West regions.
The Division III singles champion will automatically advance to the Oracle ITA National Fall Championships in Newport Beach, CA from November 6-10 while the doubles champions will advance to the ITA Cup finals to compete against the Division II, NAIA and JUCO champions for a chance to qualify for the Oracle ITA National Fall Championships.
The opening rounds of the singles draw kicks off at 9:00 AM Thursday morning with Goetz pitted against Chicago's Nicole Semenov and Cartledge going up against Claremont-Mudd-Scripps' Justine Leong. The winner of the Goetz/Semenov match will go against the winner of CMS' Catherine Allen and Southwestern's Nina Miltrofanova while the winner of Cartledge/Leong will advance to face Kenyon's Erika Oku or Bethel's Grace Riermann in the quarterfinals at 12:30 PM on Thursday.
The doubles tournament begins play at 4:00 PM Thursday afternoon following the first two rounds of the singles draw. Goetz and Watson will be matched up against the top-seed in Catherine Allen and Leong from CMS while Olcay and Cartledge opposes Kenyon's Oku and Daria Beshentseva.
The ITA Cup has history dating back to 1986, and it is the only singles and doubles national championship event for the Division II and NAIA levels. This year, more than 8,000 players took part in a total of 60 regional tournaments to gain entry into the ITA Cup field.