The NCAA Individual Championships, starting Tuesday and going until Nov. 23 in Orlando, Fla., cap the individual-focused fall season in collegiate tennis. Across Division I, players spend the fall navigating a gauntlet of ITA events in hopes of claiming one of just 64 singles or 32 doubles spots in the draw.
This year, Virginia will send four competitors to Orlando — two of its top singles players and both of its leading doubles pairings. It is a group that Coach Sara O’Leary believes is peaking at the right time, with momentum and growing confidence giving each of them a chance to make a deep run.
“I'm just excited for all of them,” O’Leary said. “I think they're all playing well. They're competing well. And I just encourage them to take it one match at a time in a tournament like this.”
Each will look to translate their strong fall seasons into great results against other top college players, and their results this season show they are certainly capable of doing so. Matches will be streamed online, allowing fans to follow Virginia’s progress throughout the week in Orlando.
Annabelle Xu
Senior Annabelle Xu said in a preseason interview that she really wants to make a deep run for an NCAA title in her last year at Virginia. Ranked No. 23 in the NCAA and a top-16 seed in the tournament, she is one of the country’s best singles players when she is finding her shots and building points her way. She is 9-2 in singles this fall and 2-2 against ranked opponents.
After a disappointing early exit at the ITA All-American, Xu swept the Atlantic Regional, facing a tough match from a teammate, freshman Katie Rolls, in the semifinals. She shared the championship with a teammate in junior Vivian Yang, and both qualified for this week’s tournament, which Xu enters after participating in a professional event in Clemson, S.C.
“She's really worked hard over the last few weeks,” O’Leary said. “And the determination that she played with at Regionals showed us so much in her that we actually hadn't seen. And she just competed so well and was so focused and so determined.”
Vivian Yang
A transfer from Pepperdine, junior Vivian Yang has had an incredible fall in singles and in doubles. The lefty from New Zealand has put up an incredible 11-1 singles record in her first semester as a Cavalier and is currently representing her nation at the Billie Jean King Cup in Poland. Through fall, she has only dropped three sets in singles play.
“I think she's an incredible athlete, and she's very competitive,” O’Leary said. “I think when she came here, what it seemed like she was lacking a little bit was just organization within her game, and credit to her — she came back six weeks before school started, so she was here in the summer, and that was a big, big focus for us.”
Figuring out who she is as a player and how she builds points has been a revelation for the No. 114 Yang, who was a very good singles player for the Waves but has looked nearly unbeatable in the past few months. If she keeps up the momentum she has built this fall, playing against some legitimate competition, she can certainly make a real push in the bracket.
Annabelle Xu and Martina Genis Salas
Xu and sophomore Martina Genis Salas have now been playing together for a year and a half, and that experience and familiarity are showing. The No. 26 pairing in the NCAA, Xu and Genis Salas are 10-1 in the fall, their lone loss being early at the ITA All-American in late September.
They bounced back by winning the ITA Atlantic Regional title, a path that included a competitive win in the semifinals over Virginia freshmen Katie Rolls and Blair Gill. O’Leary spoke of their experience together as well as how much they love playing with each other, and said that the key to going deep in the tournament is just mental consistency and belief.
“Going into the tournament next weekend, it's just about belief,” O’Leary said. “And it's about just trusting their patterns, staying together and just staying really focused every single match. I think if they can do that, they're a really dangerous team.”
Melodie Collard and Vivian Yang
The most recent of Virginia’s qualifiers, and the one most expected to lift the trophy, is the doubles pairing of Yang and graduate student Melodie Collard. The duo is ranked No. 9 in the country, and both have an impressive doubles pedigree, with Collard being the reigning NCAA doubles champion, having won it with Elaine Chervinsky last year.
Collard played a doubles tournament in lieu of the two going to the Regional, which Xu and Salas won, but the pairing went to the ITA Conference Masters as the ACC’s representative, and earned their qualification there. The pairing has a high ceiling.
“I think their game styles really complement each other really well,” O’Leary said. Vivian is so good at just staying up on the baseline, taking the ball early, keeping the ball low, which is very similar to how Elaine played, and Melodie is just really great moving off of that type of ball, just putting a lot of pressure on her opponents.”
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