SAN DIEGO – The San Diego State men's tennis team resumes its fall tournament schedule this weekend when it ventures up the coast for the annual ITA Southwest Regional Championships, Oct. 18-22, at Ralphs-Straus Tennis Center in Malibu, Calif.
The Aztecs are among a field of 13 teams at the regional event, joining host Pepperdine, Arizona, Arizona State, Cal Poly, Grand Canyon, Hawai'i, Loyola Marymount, UC Irvine, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, USC and the University of San Diego.
SDSU's entire eight-man roster will participate in the tournament, which commences on Thursday at 9 a.m. PT with main draw doubles action, followed by two rounds of singles play. Doubles and singles competition continues through the weekend before culminating with championship finals on Monday. A link to updated draws is available at the top of this page.
Two Aztecs doubles tandems received first-round byes, including the pairing of senior Sander Gjoels-Andersen and junior Rafael Gonzalez Almazan, who received all-Mountain West accolades last year, as well as the duo of juniors David Hough and Nicholas Mitchell.
Gjoels-Andersen and Gonzalez Almazan will square off against UCSB's Joseph Guillin and Hironori Koyanagi in the round of 32, starting at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, while Hough and Mitchell will tackle Pepperdine's Felipe Galvao and Scotland Garapedian at the same time.
Earlier in the round of 64, senior Raul de la Torre and sophomore Jan Kirchhoff will join forces to battle Cal Poly's Alexander Stater and Roman Shenkiryk at 9 a.m., while junior Arnaud Restifo and sophomore Ignacio Martinez will lock horns with UCLA's Connor Rapp and Max Wild.
In a scheduling quirk, four SDSU players will face UC Irvine opponents in their opening singles matches, including Gjoels-Andersen, who will cross paths with Antoine Barthe in the first round, while de la Torre takes on Aaron Bailey. In addition, Hough is scheduled to engage the Anteaters' Mateus Smolicki, while Kirchhoff is slated to tangle with Daniel Gealer.
In other first-round singles action, Restifo will face Pepperdine's Matias Sborowitz; Gonzalez Almazan will battle Anders Holm of UCSB; Mitchell will engage Noah Dufort of USD, while Martinez will square off against LMU's Diego Nava.
Hough posted a solid 3-1 singles record at the Aztec Fall Invitational earlier this month, while Gjoels-Andersen returns to the courts for the first time since the ITA All-American Championships, where he won twice in the pre-qualifying singles bracket before falling in the round of the 64.
A total of 12 Division I ITA Regional Championships are scheduled across the country between Oct. 11-23, with a trip to the Oracle ITA National Fall Championships in Surprise, Ariz., awaiting the singles and doubles winners of each.
Men's Tennis Gearing Up for ITA Southwest Regionals
