Jared, do you have any updates on our tennis recruiting? Are we bringing in any future Norrie's or Rybakov's to help us remain competitive at the highest level?
Well, recruiting in tennis is not as covered or involved as it is in football, baseball or basketball because coaches only have 4.5 scholarships available, there is a lot of recruiting of players from outside the U.S., there are a lot of transfers from other schools of players wishing to leave because they're not getting a lot of playing time and that usually doesn't clear up until after the Spring season is over, and, most importantly, Coach Roditi understandably plays things very close to the vest. There are some recruiting sites, but unlike football, they really just publicize the good junior players and don't have much info/speculation about where the players are headed until they actually commit. The recruiting deadline in tennis is early November, so that's when things happen; not now.
Our top recruit last November was Alastair Gray, a top British junior, who currently is ranked #1049 in the ATP rankings. He enrolled this January but is not eligible to play as yet (he was homeschooled in the U.K.) and is effectively redshirting. He was a teenaged hitting partner for Andy Murray at last year's Wimbledon and he's played a bunch of pro tourneys and everyone is very high on his talent. He's been working out with the team all Spring, was in all the team pics for the trophy presentations and has even making fundraising calls for TCU in the last 2 weeks. This Spring, instead of playing for TCU, Alastair played in the Dallas Challenger in January, the Irving Challanger in March (losing in the qualies) and this past month, he played in the Calabasas Futures and Little Rock Futures, where he played 3 qualie matches in each and made the main draw at Little Rock, losing in the first round to Eric Quigley who's ranked ATP#411 (not too far behind Norrie). He'll probably be eligible in the fall; if not then, in January.
Edurado Nava is expected back next year after recovering from his hamstring injury. Felipe Escobar is also expected back - we didn't see as much of him this Spring as I thought we would. In addition, Rybakov, Nunez, Johnson, Stalder and Mancini are also expected back and Norrie technically hasn't left yet. And Scotty Martinson, who was elevated from the club team last fall, is also presumably still available. Lopez, Daniel and Blake are listed as seniors - I don't think they have any eligibility left, but Lopez was a transfer from Kentucky and I'm not totally sure that he doesn't have time left and Blake and Daniel didn't play much this year and I'm not totally sure what the redshirt rules are. So, basically, there isn't much room left for anyone. My guess is that Roditi probably has 1-2 players in mind; either transfers or new recruits, from the U.S. or elsewhere - he's got a
lot of contacts worldwide and with every result from everywhere being available on-line, he can do a lot of the research from his computer. For the next few weeks, he'll be fairly busy - after that, he'll concentrate on it and we'll learn more this fall. Maybe Jake knows more.