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Waco, TX – Playing amidst the NCAA Division I Singles and Doubles Championships, the Collegiate Wheelchair Individual Championship came to a close on Sunday as Alabama’s Francesco Felici took home the title after an impressive 6-3, 6-4 win over Michigan’s Caidan Baxter in the finals.
This marks the third straight year in which the NCAA Championships integrated collegiate wheelchair tennis at the final site. However, this fall was the first in which the Collegiate Wheelchair Individual Championship was played in the fall in response to the NCAA Singles and Doubles Championship two-year pilot program that began this fall.
Beginning in Tuscaloosa on November 1-3, four student-athletes earned berths to compete in Waco this past weekend by advancing to the semifinals of the A draw in this qualifying tournament at the University of Alabama.
For Francesco, his performances in Waco mirrored what he had been doing all fall which was getting ahead early in the match and holding the lead throughout the match. Across his five matches played in the Collegiate Wheelchair Individual Championship, Felici did not drop a single set to any opponent.
In today’s final, Felici earned a 6-3 first-set win to grab the momentum of the match and head into the third set with the advantage. After holding a double break lead in the second set, Baxter fought back winning three straight games to bring the set score to 5-4 before Felici was able to close out the match and take home the title.
Just a freshman for the Tide, Felici came into Alabama as a highly decorated junior player having been named the 2023 ITF Junior of the Year, finishing as a finalist at the 2023 US Junior Open, and ranking as high as No. 94 in the ITF Men’s Rankings.
Felici joins a long list of Crimson Tide Collegiate Wheelchair Champions as he joins the likes of Thomas Venos and Shelby Baron who each have reached the pinnacle of the sport as Alabama student-athletes in recent years.
All competing athletes from this past weekend will now head back to campus to prepare for the spring dual-match season. The next national championship will be the Collegiate Wheelchair Team Championship will be played in April at the USTA National Campus where Houston will be defending their title from this past year.
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