CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. --- The Chattanooga men's and women's tennis teams head to Elon, N.C., for the 2009 Southern Conference Championships set to start Thursday, April 23 at the Burlington Tennis Center and Elon's Jimmy Powell Tennis Center.
The ninth seeded Lady Mocs (7-14, 2-8 SoCon) will square off with No. 8 seed Appalachian State (9-15, 3-7 SoCon) in a rematch of the season finale for both teams in which UTC fell 4-3 without No. 1 player freshman Shaina Singh.
Freshman Emily Hangstefer posted a team-best 5-5 conference record and sophomore Annie Green was 4-4 against league opponents. In overall play, freshman Jennemieke van der Veek, playing a majority at No. 2, was 10-10 with a 2-7 SoCon mark.
The match will begin at 10:30 a.m. Thursday at the Burlington Tennis Center and the winner will face top seed Furman Friday morning. The Paladins posted a 10-0 league mark during the regular season.
The Mocs (2-17, 0-10 SoCon) are seeded 11th and will face off against No. 6 seeded College of Charleston (9-13, 5-5 SoCon) in the third match Thursday afternoon. UTC fell 2-5 to the Cougars in the regular season getting wins from top seeded senior Peter Sauska and No. 6 player freshman Sam Parfitt.
Sauska is 10-9 at the No. 1 position for the Mocs with a 6-4 conference mark. Fellow senior Pavel Vostrikov finished out the regular season at 9-10 at the No. 2 spot and the pair was 10-6 in doubles play with a 7-3 SoCon mark.
The match is set to begin at 1 p.m. at the Powell Tennis Center. The winner of the match will move on to play No. 3 seed Wofford (13-10, 7-3 SoCon) at 1 p.m. Friday at Burlington.
Furman (19-7, 10-0 SoCon) won the regular season championship and claimed the top seed in the men's tournament. The Paladins won both the regular season and tournament in 2008.
