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Waco, TX – After a week of the highest level of individual competition our sport has to offer, the 2024-25 NCAA Singles and Doubles Championships have come to a close from the Hurd Tennis Center on the campus of Baylor University.
Crowning both men’s and women’s singles national champions as well as men’s and women’s doubles national champions, the 2024-25 NCAA Singles and Doubles Championships were the first of a two-year pilot in which the Division I Individual Championships were played in the fall season rather than the spring after the team championships.
Beginning with the men’s singles final, Michael Zheng (Columbia) took home the National Championship after finishing as the National Runner-Up this past spring. Facing off against fellow American Ozan Baris (Michigan State) the two traded blows throughout the contest needing three sets to determine a victor on Sunday.
After winning the first set 6-2 over Baris, Zheng dropped a close second set after going down a break late in the set to head to the winner-take-all third set. In the third, Zheng went up a break early and never looked back winning 6-2 to claim the title.
With the win, Zheng became the first NCAA Singles Champion since 1906 for Columbia and the first Ivy League NCAA Singles Champion since 1922.
In women’s singles, Dasha Vidmanova (Georgia) took down DJ Bennett (Auburn) in the All-SEC matchup to decide the National Champion. Vidmanova who won the 2024 NCAA Doubles Championship, entered the match trying to become just the sixth women’s player since 1979 to win both the singles and doubles championship during their collegiate career.
Behind her big serve and punishing aggressive game, Vidmanova was able to get out to early leads in both sets to push down any momentum Bennett tried to gain throughout the match. Winning both sets at the 6-3 mark, Vidmanova won 60% of the points in the match, capitalizing on half of the break point opportunities she had.
Vidmanova is the fourth Georgia player to win the NCAA Singles Championship but is the first to claim both the singles and doubles titles during their time in Athens.
Moving over to doubles play, it was Elaine Chervinsky & Melodie Collard (Virginia) on the women’s side and Lui Maxted & Pedro Vives (TCU) on the men’s side who were crowned National Champions on the afternoon.
For Chervinsky and Collard, they took down the all-freshman duo of Olivia Center and Kate Fakih 4-6, 6-3, 10-5 to be crowned National Champions. The pairing became the first team in Virginia women’s tennis history to win the NCAA Doubles Championship and relied on numerous third-set tiebreak wins to make history this weekend in Waco.
Facing Benjamin Kittay and Gavin Young (Michigan), Maxted and Vives needed three sets as well to determine a champion, winning 6-3, 3-7, 10-2 over the Wolverine duo. The pairing is the first to win the NCAA Doubles Championship in program history and continue the successful run of the TCU tennis program which won its first NCAA Team Championship this past spring.
With the new US Open Wild Card Playoff in place for American collegiate players, Zheng (Columbia), Baris (Michigan State), Bennett (Auburn), Center/Fakih (UCLA), and Kittay/Young (Michigan) have all claimed their spots into the four player/team playoff that is set to take place in May at the USTA National Campus to determine the US Open wild card recipients.
With the fall season and individual play now concluded, attention will now turn to the spring for the dual-match season in which the ITA Kickoff Weekend and ITA Indoor Championships take center stage early in the new year. Then in May, attention will once again return to Waco for the NCAA Team Championships which will be held at the Hurd Tennis Center as well.
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