BATON ROUGE — LSU women’s tennis head coach Tony Minnis announced on Wednesday that three highly-recruited tennis players have signed national letters of intent in the early signing period to play for the Lady Tigers.
Ebie Wilson of Mobile, Ala., Kaitlin Burns of Wilmington, N.C., and Keri Frankenberger of Gainesville, Fla., have signed and will be eligible to compete in 2009-10.
“This recruiting class is one of the best we have put together since I have been at LSU,” Minnis said. “All three of these players have an enormous amount of talent and will be able to help maintain LSU’s status as one of the top programs in the country.”
Wilson is ranked No. 44 nationally by tennisrecruiting.net and is listed as a five-star recruit. She is the 16th-ranked player in the southeast region according to tennisrecruiting.net and is the state of Alabama’s top-ranked player.
Last season she was named the 2008 Tennis Player of the Year by Mobile’s Sunrise Rotary Club. Wilson also led her high school, St. Paul’s Episcopal, to an undefeated season and the Class 5A state title, and she served as team captain.
Burns is listed at No. 52 in tennisrecruiting.net’s top-100 players and is also a five-star player. She checks in as the 19th-ranked player in the southeast region and the No. 3 player in North Carolina.
Burns has been phenomenal in high school as she has captured the Class 4A singles title in 2006 and 2007. Last season as a junior, she and her doubles partner won the state doubles title for Hoggard High School. Burns also won the 2006 Girls 16 and Under North Carolina Closed tournament. After her junior season in spring 2008, she earned All-America honors from the National High School Tennis All-American Foundation, a distinction only bestowed upon 40 girls across the nation.
Frankenberger is also a top-100 recruit by tennisrecruiting.net as she is ranked No. 86 and is listed as a four-star player. She is also the 31st-ranked player in the southeast region and is No. 17 in the state of Florida.
She helped lead Class 5A Gainesville High School to the 2006 team championship, and she captured the state singles and doubles titles that year as well. In 2007 she won the Tallahassee 18 and Under Designated tournament and repeated as state doubles champion for Gainesville. In July Frankenberger swept through the 64-seed ITA Collegiate Summer Circuit hosted by Florida State and defeated current LSU freshman Whitney Wolf to win the championship.