ST. PETER, Minn. — Several members of the Saint Mary's University men's tennis team will be taking part in the USTA-ITA Midwest Region Championships and Midwest Open, hosted by Gustavus, beginning Friday and running through Sunday.

USTA-ITA Midwest Region Field:
Central (Iowa), Wartburg, Carthage, Coe, Grinnell, Luther, UW-Eau Claire, Bethany Lutheran, St. Olaf, St. Scholastica, Saint John's, Bethel, Carleton, Edgewood, Concordia (Wis.), Saint Mary's, Hamline, Carroll, UW-Whitewater, St. Thomas, Macalester, UW-La Crosse, St. Norbert, Concordia (Minn.), Gustavus

Tournament Draws:
USTA/ITA Singles | USTAITA Doubles | Midwest Open Singles | Midwest Open Doubles

USTA-ITA Live On The Web:
Tournament Scoreboard

USTA-ITA Midwest Region Sites:
The Swanson Indoor Tennis Center, located on the west edge of the Gustavus campus in St. Peter, Minn., will serve as headquarters for the USTA/ITA Midwest Region Championships, with matches taking place at Swanson and the adjacent Brown Outdoor Courts.
Tournament Format:
For the first three rounds of singles in both the USTA/ITA and Midwest Open, matches will be 2 out of 3 sets with a 10-point tiebreak for the third set.  On Saturday and Sunday, all singles matches in both tournaments will be full 2 out of 3 sets. For doubles, all matches will be 8-game pro-sets until the finals of both the USTA/ITA and the Midwest Open.  The finals of both doubles tournaments will be 2 out of 3 sets with a 10-point tiebreak for the third set.

USTA-ITA Midwest Region This And That:
More than 100 of the top singles and doubles players in the Midwest will take part in the tournament beginning with singles matches on Friday morning at 9 a.m. … Noah Sprinkel of Coe College enters the weekend as the No. 1 overall seed in the singles draw of the USTA/ITA Midwest Regional. Challenging Sprinkel and rounding out the top four spots is Ben Shklyar of UW-Whitewater as the No. 2 seed, Mya Smith-Dennis of Gustavus Adolphus College as the No. 3 seed, and Ramesh Karki of Luther College as the No. 4 seed. Mya Smith-Dennis is the reigning singles champion after defeating Saint John's Fabricio Moncada in the championship 3-6, 6-4, 6-1 a year ago. … In the doubles draw, UW-Whitewater's Ben Shklyar and Byron Balkin are the top ranked duo. Gustavus's Mya Smith Dennis and Motasem Al-Houni are seeded second, Coe's Noah Sprinkel and Riley Galbriath are seeded third, and Gustavus' Grant Leisner and Brad Entwistle are seeded fourth. Byron Balkin and Mitch Osborne of UW-Whitewater won last season's doubles title by defeating Smith-Dennis and Amrik Donkena of Gustavus 6-2, 6-3.

Cardinals at USTA-ITA Midwest Region — Their Last Appearance:
September 28-29, 2013: Andrew Rangitsch (Oakdale, Minn.), who set a single-day school record with five wins during the opening day of the Gustavus Midwest Open, picked up right where he left off on Saturday, winning his fourth singles match of the tournament 6-0, 7-6 over Bryson Cale of Grinnell. Rangitsch's run through the singles draw would come to a screeching halt in the quarterfinals, however, as he dropped a two-and-a-half hour, three-set, 7-6, 4-6, 6-2 decision to Saint John's Alex Weigmann. … In doubles, Rangitsch and freshman Warren Lawrenz — who won their two doubles matches — came up short on Saturday, falling 8-4 to a team from UW-Whitewater. … In the USTA/ITA Midwest Regional, Bobby Steingraeber and Michael Lunka picked up their third straight doubles win with a 8-6 victory over Carleton's Stepen Nolan-Andy Catania, but came up short in the quarterfinals, falling 8-4 to Gustavus' Tyler Johnson-Grant Leisner 8-4 | Day 1 Recap | Day 2 Recap

Cardinals Up Next:
The Cardinals kick off their 2014 spring season on Feb. 1, when they host Martin Luther in a 5 p.m. nonconference match at the Winona Tennis Center.