BATON ROUGE — The Lady Tigers tennis team begins its fall 2004 season Friday in the UNLV Invitational at the Fertitta Tennis Complex in Las Vegas, Nev.
Along with LSU, the tournament includes host UNLV, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Minnesota and Hawaii.
The Lady Tigers finished last season ranked at No. 20 in the ITA polls. The team returns four juniors in Camila Caliari, Marina Chiarelli, Daysi Espinal and Lauren Seaman, and senior Amanda Mang. Mang was ranked as high as 27th regionally last year and enters this season on the national polls at No. 120.
Also participating in this weekend’s tournament in their first collegiate action will be freshmen Staten Spencer, Tiffany Tucker and Jenny Wooten.
Everyone on the roster will compete in the singles tournament, except for Caliari, who will only compete in doubles while recovering from foot surgery.
Four doubles teams will compete this weekend, all new pairs with new teammates.
Assistant coach Sandy Sureephong said the team is ready to begin the year and to improve on the success of last season.
“We’ve had a really great two weeks of practice,” she said, “and this will be a good measure of where they are in competitive matches. Our freshmen look great, and our team looks really hungry coming back from last year where they got a taste of what it was like to be a top-20 team. They want to get better, so they are really focused in practice and eager to see how this tournament goes.”
The singles quarterfinals and doubles semifinals will take place Friday starting at noon CST, the singles semifinals and doubles finals Saturday beginning at noon and the singles finals Sunday at 11 a.m.