Wednesday, 04/27/2011

ATHENS-----The University of Georgia's women's tennis team remained at No. 9 in the latest Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) rankings released Tuesday.

The Bulldogs (16-4 overall, 9-2 SEC) will learn next week if they will serve as one of the host sites for the first/second rounds of the NCAA Tennis Championships.

The NCAA will produce a selection show on Tuesday, May 3 at 5 p.m. EDT (women) and 5:30 p.m. EDT (men) that will be webcast on NCAA.com and then put on the respective tennis pages. First and second round action will be held at various campus sites from May 13-15, and the final 16 site of the 2011 NCAA Championships will be May 19-30 in Palo Alto, California on the campus of Stanford.

Complete team brackets are slated to be posted on the NCAA websites  (www.NCAA.com and www.NCAA.org) approximately 30 minutes after the completion of Tuesday's selection show. The list of individuals selected to the NCAA Singles and Doubles Championships will be posted on both websites by 6 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, May 4.

Currently, the Bulldogs have four players ranked among the ITA Top 100 in singles and two doubles teams in the top 50. Junior Chelsey Gullickson is ranked No. 22 followed by junior Nadja Gilchrist (No. 59), freshman Maho Kowase (No. 79) and senior Cameron Ellis (No. 82). In doubles, Gullickson and freshman Kate Fuller are ranked No. 10 while Gilchrist and freshman Lilly Kimbell are No. 41.

Ellis owns the top singles record this season at 28-6 while Kowase leads the team in wins with a 29-10 record. Gullickson, the 2010 NCAA singles champion, is 12-5 since returning to the team in January. She took the summer and fall semester off competing as an amateur in a few professional tournaments including the U.S. Open. Georgia's top tandem of Gullickson/Fuller is 15-5 this year.

The Bulldogs, under the direction of Jeff Wallace, have made 24 consecutive appearances in the NCAA Championships. That streak ranks in a tie for fifth longest current stretch of NCAA bids, behind California (29), Stanford (29), UCLA (29) and Texas (28). Florida also has a streak of 24 straight bids.