ITA
Katja Wiersholm will compete in the NCAA Singles Championship for the second time when the Bears converge on Waco next week.
The California women’s tennis team is sending three Golden Bears to the NCAA Singles Championship and one duo to the NCAA Doubles Championship next week, with the Bears matching their number of individual postseason qualifiers from last season.
The NCAA released its fields for the 64-player singles tournament and the 32-team doubles championship Monday, and Cal is tied with several teams for the most singles qualifiers. The Bears’ overall total of four qualifiers is right behind the leaders – North Carolina, UCLA and Virginia – which have five each.
Baylor will host the NCAA individual championships from Nov. 19-24 at the Hurd Tennis Center in Waco, Texas. Normally held in the spring, the NCAA individual championships traditionally start upon the conclusion and at the same site of the NCAA team championship in May. The individual championships are being held in the fall this season and next season as part of a pilot program, with Baylor also hosting this year’s team championship from May 15-18.
Cal sophomore Mao Mushika will compete in both the singles and doubles tournaments. A native of Ichinomiya, Japan, Mushika and senior Jessica Alsola, who hails from Fresno, were the first Bears to qualify for the postseason when they won their doubles quarterfinal at the ITA All-American Championships on Sept. 27 in Cary, North Carolina. In their first tournament as doubles partners, Alsola and Mushika beat Vanderbilt’s 29th-ranked Celia-Belle Mohr and Sophia Webster 6-2, 6-2. The Bears bring a 3-1 record to Waco.
Mushika qualified for NCAA singles more recently when she bested Pepperdine’s Vivian Yang 6-1, 6-3 in the quarterfinals of the ITA West Sectional Championships last Friday in Los Angeles. Ranked 107th, Mushika is 7-3 in singles. While this marks Mushika’s first NCAA singles tournament, she played in NCAA doubles for the first time last May with former teammate Hannah Viller Moeller, with the Bears falling in the round of 32.
Earlier last Friday, Wiersholm punched her ticket to Baylor, beating UC San Diego’s Julia Hayne 6-0, 6-2 in the quarterfinals of the ITA Conference Masters Championship in Rome,…
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