Oct. 18, 2017
SAN DIEGO ââ'¬" The San Diego State men's tennis team resumes its fall schedule this weekend when it travels up the coast for the annual ITA Southwest Regional Championships presented by Oracle, Oct. 19-23, in Malibu, California.
The tournament commences Thursday with one round of doubles competition and two rounds of singles play, while Friday's action features one round each of doubles main and consolation draws to go along with one singles main bracket and two consolation draws. The event continues Saturday and Sunday before culminating with championship and consolation finals in both doubles and singles on Monday.
The entire 11-player Aztec roster will take to the courts at Ralphs-Straus Tennis Center and Crest Tennis Courts on the campus of Pepperdine University, including junior Sander Gjoels-Andersen (Klampenborg, Denmark), who received a first-round bye in the open singles draw and will square off in the round of 64 against the winner of the match between Pepperdine's Felipe Galvao and Alexander Bourgeois of Loyola Marymount.
In a scheduling twist, four Aztecs are scheduled to battle LMU opponents in their first-round encounters, including senior Santiago Cevallos (Queretaro, Mexico), who will take on Ethan Prost, while junior Raul de la Torre (Calexico, Calif.) locks horns with Lucas Moreno. In addition, sophomore Rafael Gonzalez Almazan (Madrid, Spain) is slated to engage the Lions' Lukas Moenter, while fellow classmate Arnaud Restifo (Nice, France) awaits a clash with Nicholas Borchenko.
Gonzalez Almazan is coming off an impressive performance at the Aztec Fall Invitational earlier this month where he captured the Flight 2 singles crown.
In other first-round singles action, sophomore David Hough (Traralgon, Australia) will tangle with UCLA's Ben Goldberg; fellow classmate Joel Popov (Tampere, Finland) is set to engage Eric Kenneth of Hawai'i, while another sophomore Nicholas Mitchell (Ojai, Calif.) encounters UC Irvine's Antoine Barth.
Three SDSU freshmen will also make their initial regional appearances this weekend, including redshirt Daniel de la Torre (Calexico, Calif.), who is scheduled to face Jake DeVine of USC in the opening round, while Jan Kirchhoff (Germany) battles Daly Meinert of Cal Poly. Rounding out the Aztec singles lineup is Ignacio Martinez (Weston, Fla.), who will cross paths with UC Santa Barbara's Henrik Atlevi.
In doubles competition, Gonzalez Almanzan will join forces with Raul de la Torre, while Cevallos teams with Restifo. Other SDSU pairings include Popov/Martinez, Gjoels-Andersen/Mitchell, along with Hough/Kirchhoff.
Along with SDSU, 12 additional schools will be represented at the ITA Southwest Regional including the University of San Diego, UC Irvine, UCLA, USC, UC Santa Barbara, LMU, Pepperdine, Cal Poly, Hawai'i, Arizona, Arizona State and Grand Canyon.
The ITA Regional Championships feature some of the top men's and women's players across the nation. Over 8,000 student-athletes from NCAA Division I, II, III, NAIA, junior and community colleges compete across 85 ITA Regional Championships around the country.