News Release Date:
Monday, May 4

WALLA WALLA, Wash. -- The Whitman College men's tennis team, making its third straight appearance in the NCAA Div. III national championship tournament, is headed back to California for the start of regional play.

Whitman, 24-4 on the season and ranked No. 26 nationally, joins a trio of top 10 teams for a regional that starts Friday at the University of California-Santa Cruz (UCSC), which is 13-7 and ranked third nationally.

Coach Jeff Northam

Whitman and UCSC, the host school, are matched in one of two semifinals at 2 p.m. Friday. The other semifinal, which starts at 10 a.m. Friday, pits No. 4 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CMS), which has rolled to a 25-5 mark this season, against No. 10 University of Redlands and its 19-8 record. 

Friday's winners battle at noon Saturday for the right to advance to the eight-team national finals, which gets underway May 19 on the CMS courts. 

CMS hosted the west coast regional a year ago when the same four teams participated. CMS, ranked No. 2 nationally at the time, skipped past Whitman 5-1 and then dispatched UCSC 5-3 in the regional final.

UCSC, an NCAA Div. III independent, appears to have the edge in this weekend's regional. In a match played just last Saturday, the Banana Slugs slipped past CMS by a 6-3 count. 

CMS downed Redlands 8-1 on April 18 to win the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference title. The Stags blanked Redlands 9-0 during the regular season.

Whitman, which has not played UCSC, CMS or Redlands this season, won its second consecutive Northwest Conference title this spring, compiling an 18-0 record against conference foes. 

Whitman, coached by Jeff Northam, is limited to taking eight players to this weekend's regional tournament. They are senior captain Justin Hayashi, junior captain Christoph Fuchs, juniors Jake Cappel, Nadeem Kassam and Dan Wilson, and sophomores Chris Bailey, Quin Miller and Etienne Moshevich.

Washington University (St. Louis, Mo.), the defending NCAA DIII national champion, tops the most recent rankings from the Intercollegiate Tennis Association. Atlanta's Emory University, which lost 5-2 to Washington in last year's national title match, is No. 2 in the latest rankings.

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CONTACT: Dave Holden
Sports Information Director
Whitman College, Walla Walla, Wash.
holden@whitman.edu; (509) 527-5902