Want to attend
the NCAA Division I Tennis Championships in 2019 and 2021? You won’t have to drive far. The new USTA National Campus at Lake Nona will host.
After years of close calls, UCF senior Ashley Holder savored a hard-fought American Athletic Conference women's golf title.
Holder won top individual honors and the Knights took the team crown Tuesday at the Conservatory Course at Hammock Beach Resort & Golf Club.
The Knights shot 1-under-par 287 during the final round to win the team title by three strokes. Holder shot 3-under 69 in the final round.
“I feel like it was a long time coming,” said Holder, an Orlando Lake Nona High graduate. “I’m very happy and excited to win conference and as a team as well.”
The Knights will now shift their focus to NCAA Regional competition set to get under way May 8-10 at a venue to be announced.
Knights top ’Cats
Chris Williams and UCF’s pitching staff were dialed in Tuesday night.
Making his seventh start of the season, the UCF righthander was nearly unhittable. Led by Williams’ gem and a dominant bullpen, UCF defeated Bethune-Cookman 5-1 in front of an announced crowd of 1,038 at the UCF Baseball Complex.
The pitching staff retired 23 of the last 24 Wildcat hitters and faced two batters above the minimum 27.
“We obviously pitched extremely, extremely well,” UCF coach Greg Lovelady said. “We really made only one mistake that cost us a run, but other than that we just dominated. No walks, no free bases, no hit by pitches.”
With the win, UCF (27-11) completes the two-game season sweep of the Wildcats. The Knights defeated Bethune 5-4 on March 21 in Daytona Beach.
UCF (27-11) has won four in a row overall.
Title hosts
The USTA National Campus at Lake Nona was awarded the right to host the NCAA Division I Tennis Championships in 2019 and 2021.
The Orlando site will also host the Division III championships in 2022.
The event will feature the top men’s and women’s collegiate teams as well as the top individuals in the country.
The 63-plus acre campus, which opened in January, houses one of the largest and most versatile tennis facilities in the world. There are 1,200 seats and 100 courts including six red clay and two stadium courts featuring state-of-the-art amenities like courtside analytics and live streaming capabilities.
“Incredibly exciting, that’s a fair word,” USTA National Campus general manager Tim Cass said when asked to describe the venue. “It’s a unique tennis venue for any tennis event — junior, professional, collegiate, adult, wheelchair — you name it, it’s a unique venue, but part of our design, part of our plan when we built this was that collegiate was front and center.
“This campus was really built on an amateur scale and the pinnacle of the amateur scale would be the NCAA tennis championships with the best amateur players in the world.”
Nothing illustrates that point more than when more than 5,300 spectators converged on the site to watch the College MatchDay series back in March with the highlight being the FloridaFlorida State men’s match which was one of the highest attended college tennis matches in the past 10 years.
“The atmosphere resembled an NCAA Championship finals,” North Carolina women’s tennis coach
Brian Kalbas said of the event.
It’s also become a draw for college programs at every level with teams from Division I, II, III, NAIA and junior college spending time on campus including being the home court for UCF’s men’s and women’s tennis programs.
This would also be the first time since 1997 that the NCAA tennis championships have been hosted somewhere other than a campus site.
Cass said USTA officials and Central Florida Sports Commission leaders had been working worked on the bid since construction began on the $70 million facility in 2015.