University of Minnesota Athletics
Gopher Invitational To Begin Thursday
9/20/2017 12:00:00 AM | Tennis
The University of Minnesota women's tennis team will be hosting the annual Gopher Invitational this weekend at the Baseline Tennis Center. The tournament will take place from Sept. 21 - Sept. 24.
The Gophers will be bringing in around 80 players this year, and will host 10 different teams. Those teams include the University of Nebraska-Omaha, Marquette, North Carolina State, Nebraska, Drake, North Dakota, South Dakota, Northern Iowa, Iowa State, and South Dakota State.
"We are looking forward to getting a chance to compete on our home courts and implement in matches what we have been working on in practice for the last couple of weeks," first year head coach Catrina Thompson said. "It will be a great opportunity to play some good competition and get many matches in this weekend. We will be mixing up some doubles combos all weekend and are excited to see the entire team compete. Every time we host a home tournament we want to be competing for and taking home titles."
Both Thompson and assistant coach Brian Ward will be making their home coaching debuts in Maroon and Gold.
TOURNAMENT FORMAT
The format of the tournament will be six 16-player singles flights with two rounds on Friday, one round on Saturday and one round on Sunday. Scoring will be best-out-of three, no-ad scoring with a match tiebreaker if the sets are split.
There will be a daily four team doubles draw starting on Thursday at 4:00 p.m. The scoring for doubles will be one set, no-ad scoring with a tiebreaker at 6-6.
Draws will be final as the tournament begins on Thursday at 4:00 p.m. Play will begin on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 8:00 a.m.
PARTICIPANTS
Minnesota will have 11 players competiting in the tournament. Caroline Ryba is coming off her second straight season as an All-Big Ten performer and collected a 15-7 record in singles play last spring and a 21-12 overall record in 2016-17. Junior Camila Vargas Gomez is also coming off a strong season. She finished with an overall record of 21-13, including 13-9 last spring.
Tina Kreinis also is a big returning player for the Gophers this season. She brings back a 22-14 record from a season ago, including a 7-3 Big Ten record last spring.
Newcomer River Hart will be making her University of Minnesota debut at the Gopher Invitational.
In doubles, Minnesota will put five different teams on the courts. The doubles partners include Caitlyn Merzbacher/Krenis, AnneMarie Emme/Safdar, Ryba/Hart, Barbara Mancera/Camila Vargas Gomez, and Kaylssa Hall/Karyna Bihel.
HOW TO FOLLOW
This year the Gophers will feature youtube streams for each indoor court at Baseline. Check out the link to all courts below.
LIVESTREAM
You can follow the Gophers as they compete at the Gopher Invite on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
GOPHER INVITE 2016
Last season the Gophers won 20 singles matches in the tournament. They won 22 total doubles matches and came out on top of five different draws.
Players Mentioned
