2006 PSAC Individual Tennis Championship Preview

BLOOMSBURG-- Bloomsburg University will host the 2006 Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) Singles and Doubles Tennis Championships this weekend. This is the second time the Huskies have hosted the championships as the inaugural tournament was held at Bloomsburg during the 2003-04 season. Last year's tournament was cancelled due to weather conditions at Indiana (PA).

PSAC men's runner-up, Millersville, goes into the men's doubles draw with the number-one seed in Greg Bennett and Cliff Boyd. The duo will face off against the winner of Kutztown's Rubens Vianna and Somdeep Appineni and Slippery Rock's Jon Crossley and Adam Shosky.

On the bottom half of the bracket, second-seeded Dan Gal and Dan Phillips of Bloomsburg will have a first round bye. The Huskies' number one team will play the winner between East Stroudsburg's Pat Luchowski and Jeff Kurz and West Chester's Matthew Stevenson and Andrew Pollack. Gal and Phillips have six wins on the year.

In singles, Kutztown's number one, Santiago Bequerizo goes in as the favorite with a 7-1 record at number one singles. The Golden Bears will also enter Rubens Vianna and Radslaw Hlubinski in the singles. Vianna is 6-3 on the season, while Hlubinski is 7-4. For Bloomsburg, Dan Gal will lead the Huskies with 11 wins on the season, while Phillips has nine victories. Gal will see Slippery Rock's Zach Thomas in the first round, while Phillips will face off against West Chester's Pollack. Freshman Ryan Glubo will also compete in the singles, heading into the tournament with seven wins this season, five of them coming at the third-singles slot. He will face the Marauders' Boyd in the first round of competition.

Millersville's Bennett will be another contender for the title, facing off against Vianna in the opening round. Bennett is 5-5 on the season. East Stroudsburg's number one, Luchowski, will play Slippery Rock's Crossley and Hlubinski from Kutztown, will play Millersville's Chris Matisse. Rounding out the opening round of competition, The Rock's Nick Bolea will take on Adam Fisher of East Stroudsburg.

On the women's side, Kutztown's Magaly Peter and Jharna Nansi, seeded first, will play either Millersville's Christi Lilli and Kara Fisher or Shippensburg's Lina Pavilionyte and Melinda Miesel. Peter and Nansi are 10-0 on the season, with a 9-0 mark at number two doubles. Second-seeded Clarion, Cori Rombach and Kristen Jack, will have a first round bye, facing the winner of Indiana's Adriana Nunic and Laura DeBerardinis and East Stroudsburg's Shana Morris and Mandie Rutt.

Slippery Rock's Kayla Blackburn and Lara Rizzi, nabbing the third seed, will face California's Melissa Anderson and Lauren Hovey in the quarterfinals following first-round byes for both teams. PSAC Champion Bloomsburg earned the fourth seed, and a first round bye. The Huskies' duo of Tracy Nissenbaum and Lauren Colfer, who have over 20 wins in the past two seasons, will face West Chester's Amanda Zern and Megan Doyle in a quarterfinal match up.

In singles, first-seeded Inga Chilingaryan of California will be the heavy favorite after an undefeated regular season in the PSAC. Chilingaryan will face off against Caiti Golden of Millersville or Bloomsburg's Emily Murphy in the second round. Second-seeded Kerstin Kloeffer of Kutztown, following a first-round bye, will face either Aurora Ellerbach of Indiana in the second round, or teammate Lauren Losoncy. Kloeffer is 14-6 on the season, including a 9-3 record at number one singles and was a semifinalist in the tournament two seasons ago. Shippensburg's Lina Pavilionyte, the third seed, will have a bye in the first round and will face either Clarion's Cori Rombach or Bloomsburg's Iida Hokkanen in the second round.

Fourth-seeded Kayla Blackburn of Slippery Rock will have a first-round bye and meet either Kutztown's Priya Pachkawde or Clarion's Lisa Baumgartner in the second round. Pachkawde is 13-3 on the season with a 10-2 record at number three singles.

Competition will begin with two rounds of doubles at 11 a.m. on Saturday followed by two rounds of singles. Sunday action begins at 8 a.m. Brackets are available for download at http://www.bloomu.edu/sports/tennis06 and will be updated with results throughout the weekend.