SAN DIEGO – The San Diego State men's tennis team continues its fall tournament schedule in earnest this weekend when it ventures up the coast for the ITA Southwest Regional Championships, Oct. 22-26, at Ralphs-Straus Tennis Center in Malibu, California.
The Aztecs are among a field of 14 teams at the regional event, joining host Pepperdine, Arizona, Arizona State, Cal Poly, Grand Canyon, Hawai'i, Loyola Marymount, UC San Diego, UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara, USC and the University of San Diego.
SDSU will send its entire eight-player roster to the tournament, which begins on Friday at 9 a.m. PT with two rounds of doubles competition, followed by two rounds of singles play. Doubles and singles action continues through the weekend before culminating with championship finals for doubles on Monday and singles on Tuesday. The singles championship could be moved to Monday as well if agreed upon by both participants.
Consolation draws and extra matches will be played for those individuals who do not advance in the main draw. Links to updated draws will be available throughout the weekend on GoAztecs.com.
The SDSU doubles team of Johannes Seeman and Alexander Mandma earned a No. 15 seed and will face the UCSB tandem of Stefano Tsorotiotis and Alejandro Vedri in their first-round match on Friday. In addition, the combo of Victor Castro and Joe Tyler will square off against another Gaucho pairing in Diego Castillo and Josh Williams, while the duo of Judson Blair and Alex Scemanenco are set to battle UCSD's Jett Cole and Daniel Traxler, the latter of whom is a former Aztec competitor.
Rounding out the San Diego State doubles contingent are Jules Auffray and Roni Rikkonen, who will join forces to engage Grand Canyon's Mariano Argote and Jiri Novak.
Seeman also received a No. 11 seed in singles and a first-round bye, with the Aztec sophomore will play the winner of the opening-round matchup between Grand Canyon's Novak and Zach Ermert of UC San Diego no earlier than 1:30 p.m. on Friday.
In a scheduling twist, three SDSU players will face Cal Poly opponents in their opening singles encounters, including Castro, who will cross paths with Colter Smith, while Scemanenco entertains Joseph Leather. In addition, Rikkonen is scheduled to take on Gary Vardanyan.
Two other first-round singles matches will feature LMU adversaries, with Mändma battling John Bryan Otico, while Tyler will lock horns with Austin Di Guilio. The Aztec singles docket also features Auffray, who will square off against UCSB's Kai Brady.
This weekend's singles and doubles champions, along with semifinalists from the singles bracket, will qualify for the ITA National Fall Championships, set for Nov. 4-7, at Barnes Tennis Center in San Diego.