Women's Tennis to Participate in the Region Championships

TULSA -- The BYU women's tennis team will be traveling to Tulsa, Okla. to participate in the 2002 Omni Hotels Central Region Tennis Championships this week. The tournament begins Wednesday and will run through Saturday.

The Regional Tournament, which will be held on the campus of Tulsa University, marks the final tournament the Cougars will be participating in this fall. BYU head coach Craig Manning said he feels good with the play of his team so far, but is expecting good things with this tournament.

"This is the big tournament of the fall," Manning said. "We have played really well this fall, so hopefully we can keep that going in this tournament. I think we can do well this week."

Of the Cougars, four of them enter the tournament already in the single's main draw. Rebecca Pike and Elizaveta Khoudoiarova will be in the main draw as unseeded players while Lu Oswald and Dominique Reynolds both will be seeded in the top 16. Hadley Macfarlane, Nicole Schneider and Tara Porter will be competing Wednesday in the qualifying portion of the tournament to see if they will be admitted to the main draw.

In doubles, BYU will have three teams competing, with Oswald and Reynolds playing as the second-seeded team in the tournament. Pike and Khoudoiarova will form one of the other teams and Schneider and Macfarlane will be the other doubles team.

Competing along with BYU in the tournament will be MWC opponents Air Force, Colorado State, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. Head coach Craig Manning said he likes preseason tournaments because they help the team know where they are playing well and where they need to improve.

"The key this early in the season is to play matches, a lot of matches," Manning said. "This tournament will give us a good chance to play some quality tennis against some good teams. We also get to see and play against teams from our conference that we will see later in the year."

After the Regional Tournament, the Cougars will continue to practice through the fall and then resume match play in January, 2003.