Ducks Head to Ojai for Pac-12 Championships
EUGENE – After concluding the regular season 11-10 and 4-6 in Pac-12 play, the Oregon women’s tennis team will now head to Ojai, Calif., for the Pac-12 Championships where players will complete individually for the conference singles and doubles titles. Unlike other conferences, the Pac-12 does not have a team tournament for women’s tennis.
The four-day bracket-styled tournament will begin on Thursday, April 23, and wrap up on Sunday, April 26, with the women’s singles championship scheduled to be aired on Pac-12 Networks live at 10 a.m. (PT) while the doubles championship will be tape delayed and aired at 7 p.m.
DUCK READY FOR OJAI
Head coach Alison Silverio has elected to take her top-four singles players in Nia Rose, Alyssa Tobita, Nicole Long and Marlou Kluiving to this week’s Pac-12 Championships held at the Ojai Valley Athletic Club. The four are also Oregon’s No. 1 and No. 2 doubles teams. Seeding for the women’s singles and doubles tournament will is available late Wednesday night.
Kluiving leads the pack with an overall singles record of 22-8 at No. 4 singles while Tobita checks in as the only other 20-match winner with a 20-12 mark at singles No. 2. The two nearly have identical records in conference play with Kluiving at 4-5 compared Tobita’s 4-6. Long narrowly edged Rose in the total wins category with a 17-14 record at No. 3 singles while the freshman wrapped up her first dual season playing in the top singles position at 16-16. Rose was also credited with victories over three top-25 opponents.
In doubles play, the UO dynamic duo of Rose and Tobita sport an impressive record of 25-9 in dual play and look to add to that at this week’s championships. Kluiving and Long, who have played at the No. 2 doubles position all year, rock a 14-9 record in dual play. Oregon has seen success in Pac-12 play this season at doubles with both doubles couples owning a 5-3 record, respectively.
DUCKS ADD THREE FOR 2016
With a full year of recruiting under her belt, head coach Alison Silverio has secured the program’s first-ever top-25 recruiting class with the additions of Christi Woodson, Shweta Sangwan and Micheline Aubuchon the first-year head coach announced on Monday, April 20.
Woodson, Silverio’s third five-star recruit since taking over the program last June, is set to graduate from Eau Gallie High School, where she lettered all four years. The future Duck recently won the Florida High School Athletic Association Class 3A Singles Championship, upsetting the top-seeded player in the finals. She’s currently ranked No. 10 in the state of Florida, No. 22 in the southeast region and No. 71 nationally according to Tennisrecruiting.net.
Sangwan comes to Oregon after being chosen as one of five tennis players from India as part of the IMG Reliance Scholarship in 2010. The 16-year-old signee has multiple international tournament experiences since training at the IMG Academy under Nick Bollettieri in 2010. She has reached the quarterfinals in a pair of tournaments, with her quarterfinal appearance at the Eddie Herr International Junior Tennis Championships being her marquee accomplishment to date. She is currently ranked No. 567 by the International Tennis Federation, having played in 12 events with a 22-17 record in singles and 23-17 mark in doubles play.
Joining Woodson and Sangwan is Aubuchon who is set to graduate from Laurel Springs School. The four-star recruit according to Tennisrecruiting.net is ranked No. 23 in the state of California and No. 29 in the southwest region. She sports a 15-20 overall record in the junior circuit with an 8-1 mark against two-star to four-star rated players. In 2012, Aubuchon captured the Southern California Tennis Association’s Junior Satellite Masters tournament in the U14 division, dropping only seven games and no sets in the entire tournament.
MOVIN’ ON UP
The Ducks are once again ranked this week in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association polls, checking in at No. 56. The last time the Ducks were ranked for eight-consecutive weeks was back in 2009 when UO was ranked for nine-straight weeks (Jan. 29-March 24).
The Ducks continue to hang steady in this week’s ITA singles and doubles rankings after completing both the Pac-12 and regular season. Freshman Nia Rose checks in at No. 78 in the ITA singles rankings after splitting her pair of matches last week.
The duo of Long and Marlou Kluiving stayed at No. 65 after going 1-0 last weekend. Rose and Alyssa Tobita moved up a few tickets, checking in at No. 57 after going 2-0 last week to close out the regular season.
POWERHOUSE PAIR
Oregon’s freshmen pair of Nia Rose and Alyssa Tobita has been a force to be reckoned with for UO at the No. 1 position. The two have compiled a 25-9 doubles record with two matches remaining in the season along with the Pac-12 Tournament. Their 25 wins surpassed the former UO pair of Dominika Dieskova and Daria Panova (23-12) for the No. 2 spot on the all-time doubles single-season wins list.
SOPHOMORE SENSATION
Sophomore Marlou Kluiving has had a monstrous sophomore campaign, owning a 22-8 overall record in singles play. The 22 wins ties her with her current doubles teammate, Nicole Long, for ninth on the all-time single-season singles wins list. Kluiving still has an opportunity to move up in the standings should she advance in the conference tournament.
SILVERIO SIGNS FIRST RECRUITS
In her first signing class as head coach, Alison Silverio inked a pair of five-star recruits. Silverio first signed Daniella Nasser, who hails from Tampa, Fla. The lefty senior at Academy of Holy Names is a three-time District 10 champion in both singles and doubles as well as a regional champion.
They days later, Silverio inked her second five-star recruit in Rebekah Anderson. Anderson, a lefty like Nasser, hails from La Mirada, Calif., where she is ranked No. 14 in the state and No. 19 in the southwest region and No. 77 nationally according to Tennisrecruiting.net. The SoCal native has had plenty of experiences playing against top 50 players in USTA National events.
SILVERIO ADDS GIANNONI
Less than a month after being named the 10th head coach in Oregon women’s tennis history, Alison Silverio announced Tony Giannoni as her assistant coach. Giannoni, a Miami, Fla., native was previously at UCF before joining the Ducks. Silverio and Giannoni have known each other for a while, as they have frequently crossed paths on the recruiting trails.
While with the Knights, Giannoni helped guide them to 14 victories during the 2012-13 season – the most wins in a single season since the 1999-00 season. He also helped freshman Caroline Eberhart reach the 25-win plateau that year, the fourth-best mark in a single season at UCF.
Prior to his time with the Knights, Giannoni spent two seasons with his alma mater, Florida. As a volunteer assistant with UF, the Gators went 24-3 overall – undefeated in SEC play (11-0) – and advanced to the NCAA Final Four in his first season. UF followed up with a sweet sixteen appearance the next year before Giannoni joined UCF.
SILVERIO NAMED 10TH UO WOMEN’S TENNIS HEAD COACH
After an extensive national search, Athletics Director Rob Mullens named Alison Silverio as the 10th women’s tennis head coach at Oregon. Silverio arrived in Eugene after spending the past four seasons as an assistant coach at Georgia Tech, her alma mater. She succeeded Paul Reber who stepped down last April after compiling a 77-101 mark over eight seasons at the helm.
Following a stellar playing career that culminated in captaining the Yellow Jackets to the 2007 NCAA National Championship and earning tournament MVP accolades, Silverio has experienced continued success in the coaching ranks, starting with a two-year stint at North Carolina State, where she helped the Wolfpack to a pair of team NCAA appearances in 2008 and 2010, and assisted with bringing in the first top 25 recruiting class in program history (2010).
At Georgia Tech, she helped assemble the No. 1 recruiting class in the nation in 2012, and followed that up with the No. 6 class in 2013. Silverio tutored the top-ranked doubles team in the nation last spring as well as the ITA National Indoor doubles champions and ITA Regional doubles champions in 2013. The Yellow Jackets made NCAA Sweet 16 appearances in 2012 and 2013.
