SAN ANTONIO — The UTSA women’s tennis team will open its 2015 fall schedule at this weekend's Marco & Co. Catering Islanders Open. The three-day tournament will begin on Friday at the Thomas J. Henry Center and the H-E-B Tennis Center in Corpus Christi.
Matches are scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. on Friday at the H-E-B Tennis Center with third-round matches and championship rounds taking place at the Thomas J. Henry Center on Saturday and Sunday.
The Roadrunners will compete in singles and doubles matches against players from Incarnate Word, Texas-Rio Grande Valley, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and UT Arlington. The event is sanctioned by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) and results will count toward individual ranking points in the ITA singles and doubles ranking system.
UTSA returns six letterwinners from last year's squad that won 11 matches and advanced to the Conference USA Tournament quarterfinals. In fact, the Roadrunners won their first postseason contest in five years when they rallied past UTEP by a score of 4-2 in the opening round.
Leading the way for UTSA is junior Miriam Rosell Canudas, who was one of 14 players that earned first-team all-league accolades last spring. She won a team-leading 15 singles matches last spring despite missing the opening three contests with an injury. Nine of her wins came at the top spot in the lineup, five more were at the No. 2 position and her other triumph happened on the third court. She finished the year with a four-match winning streak, was victorious in 12 of her final 14 completed outings overall and posted a season-long six-match winning streak from March 1-15. It marks the second consecutive season that Rosell Canudas earned all-league accolades, as she was a second-team choice as a true freshman a year ago.
Other Roadrunners back this season include seniors Jacobea Junger, Nicole Karaklis and Alena Shichkova, junior Lina Hallgren and sophomore Sonia Madroñal Medina. The squad also welcomes newcomers junior transfer Meredith Hopson and freshman Charleen Tiwari.