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BLACKSBURG, Va. -- The Virginia Tech women’s tennis team will be well represented at the Wilson/ITA East Region Championships. Tech will have a total of six athletes in the tournament with two singles players and two doubles teams participating in Friday’s qualifying rounds. The event features players from 60 schools in the region competing to qualify for the ITA National Indoor Championships next month in Charlottesville, Va. The two singles finalists and the doubles champion from the regional will automatically qualify for the national championship. The East Regional, scheduled to continue through Oct. 28, is being played at the Levy Tennis Pavilion on the University of Pennsylvania campus.

The tournament opens on Friday with the 32 draw qualifying rounds, starting at 8 a.m. Two rounds of singles will be played with the eight winners advancing to Saturday’s main draw. After the completion of singles play, Friday’s action will conclude with two rounds of qualifying doubles where four surviving teams will advance to the main draw.

Martha Blakely (Fr., Reading, Pa.) will face Maryann Miltchusky (Rutgers) in her first qualifying singles match, while Abbey Walker (Sr., Lancaster, S.C.) battles Sinziana Chis (Cornell) in another qualifying contest. Inga Beermann (Sr., Bad Salzuflen, Germany), seeded No. 11, Yasmin Hamza (So., Cairo, Egypt), ranked No. 110 nationally and seeded No. 17, Jessica Brouwer (Sr., Maarssen, Netherlands) and Holly Johnson (So., Tallahassee, Fla.) are in the main draw where they will see their first singles action on Saturday.

In qualifying doubles, Beerman/Blakely will play Emily Ellis/Kathrin Sorokko (Brown) and Hamza/Walker face Vicky Brook/Stevi Petrelli (Yale) in their first round matches. Brouwer/Johnson are already in the main draw and will see their first doubles action on Saturday.

Seventeen Wilson/ITA Regional Championships for NCAA Division I men and women are taking place over these last two weekends of October at campuses throughout the country.

The 2008 ITA National Intercollegiate Indoor Championships, the nation’s premier collegiate indoor tennis tournament, is the second of three national championship events for college tennis this season. The first events – the Riviera/ITA Women’s and D’Novo Men’s All-American Championships – were held earlier this month, and the third event is season-ending NCAA Championships in May. The ITA National Intercollegiate Indoor Championships feature a 32-player singles field and 16-team doubles field for men and women, including: qualifiers from these Wilson/ITA Regional Championships held across the country, the ITA National Small College champions, top performers from the ITA All-American Championships and at-large wild card selections made by the ITA National Tournament Committee. Overall, more than 7,000 players from nearly 600 schools participate annually in the ITA Regional and National Intercollegiate Championships.

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