Sept. 13, 2016
By Joanne Norell
Subscribe to the Fighting Irish Women’s Tennis schedule now on any device (powered by eCal)
NOTRE DAME, Ind. — A strong schedule awaits the University of Notre Dame women’s tennis team in 2016-17, as the Irish released the upcoming slate Tuesday.
The Irish will compete in six fall tournaments before launching into the dual season in January. The 24-match head-to-head slate includes matches against 11 NCAA Championship qualifiers and 16 end-of-year Oracle/ITA-ranked squads.
They will begin competition at the end of September at the Wildcat Invitational at Northwestern (Sept. 30-Oct. 1) before gearing up for the fall’s three major Intercollegiate Tennis Association events: the ITA All-American Championships (Oct. 1-9), ITA Midwest Regional Championships (Oct. 20-25) and the USTA/ITA National Indoor Intercollegiate Championships (November 3-6). They will wrap up the fall schedule when they host the Notre Dame Invitational (Nov. 4-6), while the annual Lakewood Ranch Invitational (Nov. 4-6) is also included on the slate.
The Irish will get nearly three months off before returning for the dual itinerary in January, kicking off the year at home against Western Michigan and Wright State (Jan. 22). They will play four of their next five matches on the road, including the Atlantic Coast Conference opener at Pittsburgh (Jan. 29). The Irish will then host Michigan (Feb. 3) before Illinois (Feb. 12), Indiana (Feb. 18) and Louisville (Feb. 19).
Notre Dame will host its longest homestand next, with five matches at the Eck Tennis Pavilion against Purdue (Feb. 22), Michigan State (Feb. 25), Bowling Green (Feb. 25), Boston College (March 3) and Syracuse (Feb. 5). They will head to Virginia over Spring Break to play Norfolk State (March 13) and William & Mary (March 15), wrapping up the trip in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, at Wake Forest (March 17).
Five of their next six matches will take place at home: against Virginia (March 19), NC State (March 24), Miami (March 26), Duke (April 7) and North Carolina (April 9), broken up only by a trip to Virginia Tech (March 31). The Irish will close out the season on the road at Florida State (April 13), Georgia Tech (April 15) and Clemson (April 23) before heading into the ACC Championship at Cary Tennis Park in Cary, North Carolina (April 26-30).
The first rounds of the NCAA Championship will take place during the second weekend in May. The Round of 16 through the team championship and the individual championships will take place at the Dan Magill Tennis Complex at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, From May 18-29.
— ND —
Joanne Norell, athletics communications assistant director at the University of Notre Dame, has been part of the Fighting Irish athletics communications team since 2014 and coordinates communications efforts for the Notre Dame women’s soccer, men’s tennis, women’s tennis and fencing programs. Norell is a 2011 graduate of Purdue University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in mass communication, and earned her master’s degree in sports industry management from Georgetown University in 2013.