Mid-October and college tennis 2015-16 sees exciting action these days with Fall Invitationals getting players come together to engage in preparation tournaments. At the same time, Regional Championships in all college divisions are currently underway. Just like our first edition on the Fall Invitationals 4 weeks ago, our Friday Scholarship Guide today will provide you with a visual overview of all the events in October.
The college season 2015-16 has finally arrived and is already in full swing. How's that even possible with college tennis being a spring sport and the real season not to be kicked off until 2016? 'Fall Invitationals'; a large number of tournaments, which are being held these days across the country. Today's Friday Scholarship Guide will provide you with a visual overview of all the Invitationals college tennis has seen and continues to see in September.
Everybody interested in college tennis knows about D-I tennis pretty well. But what about NCAA D-II tennis? And NAIA? Sure, there are athletic scholarships, but how strong are the divisions in reality? Time to find out once and forever whether the NCAA D-II or the NAIA is stronger, and how they stack up compared to the elite NCAA D-I.
Sebastian Stiefelmeyer was one of 5 players who was at the top of the ITA NCAA-DI ranking during the 2014/2015 season. Since Sebastian's first appearance as #1 of the nation in January this year, he was consistently within the Top 8 of the ranking. His last appearance as a college player is the NCAA Tennis Singles Championship from May 20 to May 25, 2015. Read our extensive interview with him about his experience as a college tennis player, what he will remember the most, and why he recommends young fellow tennis players to get an education at college and play for a team.
College tennis sees its final highlight of the 2014/2015 season these days. The final rounds of the team championship tournaments are being played as we speak in all divisions across the country: NCAA Division I-III, NAIA, and NJCAA are about to determine their team champions of the season before the singles and doubles tournaments will serve to do the same. Friday Scholarship Guide explains the different events, and recommends you to take a look at some live college action online.
Will no-ad scoring be the future of collegiate tennis? There is a clear move in that direction, and this week's Friday Scholarship Guide will take a look at what coaches and players think about the scoring format, which had in fact been college tennis standard decades ago. Does no-ad scoring really offer the potential to shorten dual matches and make it more attractive to watch...?
Two interesting headlines have appeared in the college tennis world recently, which we'd love to share with our readership! Firstly, there are excellent opportunities to watch first-class NCAA D-1 tennis either on national TV or online right now, from April 16 - April 26, 2015. And secondly, the Big 12 conference, featuring some of the strongest of all college athletes, changed its rules about fan behavior quite a bit. You should read on, as they create an atmosphere on the court, which you simply do not know from pro tennis matches.
As part of the BNP Paribas Open, 8 men's teams (NCAA D-I) convene on the final weekend of the event to play the 'Collegiate Challenge'. Ticket holders will be able to see some of the nation's best ranked tennis players including top 10 players #4 Julian Lenz, #7 Axel Alvarez Llamas, and #8 Yannick Hanfmann. The Collegiate Challenge offers an excellent platform for college tennis to gain wider popularity and is reason enough to dedicate this week's Friday Scholarship Guide to the action in Indian Wells.
We're extremely happy to have one of the currently best college tennis players give us his personal Top 5 reasons why he loves college tennis in today's Friday Scholarship Guide. You'll see that the team spirit and the mere fact of being part of a team in an individual sport like tennis have played a major role for Sebastian.
In order to be declared eligible by the NCAA Eligibility Center all athletes undergo a screening process on the basis of athletic and academic criteria. This week's Friday Scholarship Guide is about NCAA eligibility criteria for entering freshmen in Division 1 teams. We'll cover NCAA Division 2 and NAIA in separate blog articles at a later stage.
