ITA Kick-Off Weekend

One of the most geographically wide-ranging tennis tournaments in the world will begin play on the weekend of January 26 through 29, 2018. That is the tenth annual Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) Kick-Off Weekend, launching the 2018 spring season of intercollegiate tennis. It will happen at 24 different NCAA Division I tennis facilities, and include 60 teams from each gender. The event begins with 15 “regional” competitions, each one involving four men’s and four women’s college teams. (These tourneys are not necessarily “regional” by geography.) The top 15 squads in last year’s final Oracle/ITA Collegiate Tennis Rankings became the host sites. The four teams play a single-elimination event at each regional. The 15 winners go to the ITA Division I National Team Indoor Championships next month. The women’s indoor nationals will happen at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, February 9-12, while the men’s go off February 16-19 at the University of Washington at Seattle. The two host universities each have automatic entries to the indoor nationals, so need not play in the Kick-Off Weekend events. The design yields a total of 16 varsity squads competing for the national title on both men’s and women’s sides.

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On the KIck-Off Weekend, the 15 host colleges are all seeded #1 at their regional playoffs. Last June, a draft held via conference call determined the #2-4 seeds for each regional event—again with the final national rankings (beginning at #16) setting the order of selection. The coach of the #16-ranked team got first choice of which regional to enter, followed by the #17 coach, and so on. The resulting draws are here. “It’s a unique strategy for filling a draw,” says Dan Johnson, director of communications and marketing for the ITA, which is based in Tempe, Arizona. “The coaches look at the host sites, trying to see where they find the best matchups for their teams.” At each regional’s opening round, the #1 (host) seeds play the #4 seeds, while the #2 and #3 seeds duke it out. The two winners that result then play each other for the regional championship, while the losing squads complete a consolation contest. In past years, the hosting colleges have done very nicely in the regionals, as befits their ITA-topping rankings from the previous season. In the 2017 Kick-Off events, the women’s host colleges won 13 of the 15 regional playoffs, while their male counterparts prevailed in 12 of 15. On the other hand, last year also saw the first #4 seed (the Ole Miss women) will a Kick-Off regional. Getting to the ITA Division I National Indoor Championships and, even better, winning it, is no small matter, and might even foretell greatness in outdoor tennis. In 2017, the Florida women and the Virginia men captured the ITA National Team Indoor Championships, and both teams closed their seasons by claiming the NCAA National Championships. Stay abreast of college tennis with UTR. You can view UTR Power 6 ratings on our site. Join for free here.