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Long Beach State University Athletics
Razakasoa Selected For NCAA Singles Championship Field
5/4/2016 12:00:00 AM | Women's Tennis
Long Beach, Calif. - The NCAA announced the field for this year's Division I Women's Tennis Singles Championships, and Long Beach State junior Maeva Razakasoa has been included in the field of 64. Razakasoa, who was ranked No. 82 in the nation in the most recent ITA Division I singles rankings, enters the field as an automatic qualifier from the Big West.
This is the first time Long Beach State has had a player in the NCAA singles tournament since current assistant coach Anais Dallara was invited back in 2012. This is the fifth singles invitation in 49er history as Razakasoa joins an elite group of invitees: Jing Chen (1998), Hannah Grady (2006, 2008) and Dallara (2012).
The competition will be held May 25-30 at the Case Tennis Center in Tulsa, Okla., following the completion of the team tournament. The draw will be released closer to the start of the competition, but the 64 participants have all been announced. Razakasoa has played four of the other competitors in the field who are all at-large selections in the tournament.
Each of those four matches went to three sets, and Razakasoa was 2-2 against that elite competition. She has wins over Wisconsin's Lauren Chypyha and Arizona State's Desirae Krawczyk with losses to Arizona's Lauren Marker and North Carolina State's Martina Frantova. Beach Tennis' top player has gone 27-9 this season overall with an 18-4 record in dual match play.
Razakasoa, who was also named the Big West Player of the Year earlier in the day, will be looking for the first victory in the competition since Chen's first-round win back in '98.
In the doubles competition, Long Beach State has a team listed among the alternates for the tournament should other teams drop out. LBSU's top pair of Laura Eales and Hayley Thompson were listed as the sixth alternate for the NCAA Division I Doubles Championships. The Beach has only had one other team (Grady and Jessica Weeks) to compete in the doubles tournament back in 2006.
