No. 6 seed Wolf Pack to begin NAIA Women’s Tennis National Championship Wednesday

MOBILE, Ala. – The 44th Annual NAIA Women's Tennis National Championship has gotten underway at the Mobile Tennis Center, and the Loyola Wolf Pack will begin the tournament on Wednesday as the No. 6 overall seed. As one of the top eight seeds in the tournament, Loyola received a bye into the second round. 

The Wolf Pack (16-5, 4-2 SSAC) recently took down fellow top-eight seeds William Carey and Middle Georgia in the SSAC Championship tournament to be crowned conference champions for the first time. With the championship win, the Pack set a new program record for wins in a single season and automatically qualified for the national tournament. Loyola earned a ranking of sixth in the NAIA Coaches' Top 25, and they got a sixth seed in the NAIA tournament to match. It's the highest ranking and seed for the team in the history of the program.

In the Round of 16, Loyola will face the Marian (Ind.) Knights, the No. 11 seed that beat No. 22 Concordia 4-0 in the first round. The Knights (14-8) played their conference schedule in the fall, finishing as the runners-up in the Crossroads League with a 4-3 loss to No. 23 Bethel (Ind.) in the final. 

With a win against Marian, the Wolf Pack would move on to face the winner of No. 3 seed Lindsey Wilson (Ky.) and No. 14 Our Lady of the Lake (Texas), who got past Oakland City in the first round. Loyola has never played against Lindsey Wilson, but the Pack did defeat OLLU in March of this year. 

Loyola has put together its most successful season so far with strong performances in singles and doubles. The Wolf Pack have claimed the doubles point in 18 of 21 matches this season, and nearly all of the top six singles players have double-digit match wins. 

Lucy Carpenter and Chloe Henderson, the NAIA's No. 5-ranked doubles team, have gone 18-1 this season, while Adele Fereres and Micaela Ponce, ranked No. 46 as a team, have a 14-2 record. Reilly Briggs and Avery Frierson have gone 7-4 as a doubles team this season. 

Going into the tournament, three Wolf Pack student-athletes are ranked nationally in NAIA ITA singles. Carpenter, ranked No. 5 individually for the second year in a row, is 15-3 overall. Ponce, ranked a career-best No. 35, is 9-4. Henderson, who's third on the team in wins with a 14-7 record, is ranked No. 50. Fereres, who spent the later half of the season ranked but is currently unranked, leads the team in singles victories with a 16-2 record and a seven-match winning streak. Frierson had a strong month of April to propel her to a 10-4 individual record, and Avrora Volkova, who clinched the SSAC Championship for the Pack, is 11-6 in singles. 

This is the third consecutive year in which Loyola has qualified for the NAIA National Championship, and it's the team's fourth appearance in program history. Last year, the team reached the quarterfinals after wins against Ottawa (Kan.) and SCAD Savannah in the first two rounds before falling to eventual champion Georgia Gwinnett.