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Long Beach State University Athletics
Beach Tennis Makes Home Debut at Fall Tournament This Weekend
10/6/2016 12:00:00 AM | Women's Tennis
2016 Beach Tennis Fall Tournament Draws 
Long Beach, Calif. - Beach Tennis will be making its home debut this weekend at Rhodes Tennis Center, hosting the Beach Tennis Fall Tournament Friday-Sunday. Ten other teams from across the country will be in town, playing four 16-player singles flights and two 16-team doubles flights. The schools joining Long Beach State for this year's tournament are Eastern Washington, Grand Canyon, LMU, Portland, Portland State, San Diego, and Big West rivals Cal State Fullerton, CSUN, UC Irvine and UC Riverside.
Long Beach State will have two players competing in the top singles flight, seniors Julie Gerard and Hayley Thompson. Gerard will face Grand Canyon's Tatum Prudhomme at 11am on Friday to start off the singles draw while Thompson will play Eastern Washington's Rachel Swindell at the same time.
In Singles Flight B, freshman Maren Helgo will face Faye Worrall from Eastern Washington, and Lena Pacholski will square off against Masako Makiba from Fullerton. Laura Eales will be the lone 49er in Flight C, taking on UC Riverside's Natalie Penner in her opening match. Rounding out singles action in Flight D will be freshman Natalia Munoz, who will make her Long Beach State debut in a match against Kassie Truong of UCR.
In doubles, Thompson and Pacholski will team up to face Swindell and Blessing of Eastern Washington and Helgo and Gerard will join forces to play Brianna Thompson and Taylor Rees from Portland State. Both of those matches are in Flight A of doubles, which starts at 10 a.m. on Friday. In Flight B, Eales and Munoz will team up for the first time and face off against Fararji and Pham from Cal State Fullerton.
The first two rounds of doubles will be played on Friday, with two rounds of singles set for Saturday and championship/consolation finals set for Sunday morning in all flights.
Fans looking to attend this weekend's tournament should be advised that the Long Beach Marathon will be run on Sunday morning, impacting traffic on and around the Long Beach State campus. For more information on street closures, visit RunLongBeach.com.
Players Mentioned
