PRINCETON, N.J. – The Rutgers women’s tennis team will return to Princeton this weekend for the Princeton Fall Invitational from Oct. 14-16.
Action will start at 10 a.m. on Friday followed by 9 a.m. starts on Saturday and Sunday. The team will face various other student-athletes from Princeton, LIU and UCONN in both singles and doubles play.
Last Time Out
The newcomer pair of Tara Chilton/Mai Nguyen found success, earning three wins on their way to the doubles semifinals of ITA Regionals.
Jackeline Lopez also continued to dominate, earning two wins on her way to the round of 16 in singles play.
Transferring In
RU welcomed two transfers this offseason in Amira Badawi (NJIT) and Tara Chilton (Washington).
Badawi, a native of Cairo, Egypt, compiled a 30-7 record with NJIT over two seasons, including an impressive 22-5 mark playing in the top three singles spots for the Highlanders in 2021-22, a season that ended with a second place showing in the Southland Conference Tournament.
In her two seasons at Washington, Chilton compiled an 18-18 singles and 17-14 doubles record. Last year as a sophomore, Chilton and the No. 37 Huskies played to a 14-12 overall record and an appearance in the NCAA Tournament. She went 7-2 in singles tournament play including reaching the round of 32 at ITA Northwest Regional.
Freshmen Duo
Rutgers also welcomed two freshmen to the squad, Mai Nguyen and Arina Volitova.
Ranked top 75 nationally, Nguyen arrives “On The Banks” from Atlanta, Georgia. She was the 2019 Southern Doubles Champions and finished in fifth in National Doubles. She was also the 2020 Georgia State Champion and 2021 Winter Southerns Champions.
A product of Bratislava, Slovakia, Valitova comes to the US after finding success in the European Junior circuit. She won the ITF Juniors tournaments and Tennis Europe tournaments in both singles and doubles. Valitova also won the singles J5 in Islamabad in Nov. 2020 in addition to the singles J5 in Harare in Dec. 2020. In doubles, she came out on top in the J3 in Harare in Nov. 2021 and J4 in Estonia in May 2021. She is also a member of Russian National Beach Tennis Team (U18) and won the Juniors European Championship in doubles.
Looking Ahead
RU will continue onto two more tournaments in the ITA Super Regional (Oct. 21-23) and the…
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