As we move into February and towards the end of winter, signs of tennis life abound. We are now a week into the spring college tennis season, the field for USTA Spring Nationals will be announced in a month, and March brings the start of another Countdown to Signing Day.
And, of course, we are in the midst of the college tennis recruiting season. Hundreds of high school seniors - including almost 80 of the Top 100 girls - have signed or verbally committed to college programs.
How does your favorite school stack up? The Tennis Recruiting Network shows you where things stand with its Winter Rankings of the Top 25 Women's Recruiting Classes for the Class of 2010.
Media Poll
Our recruiting class rankings are based on votes from a panel of junior tennis experts. We appreciate the time that these journalists, tournament directors, referees, and ranking chairmen from across the country have donated to vote on these recruiting classes. The panelists for this voting period are shown after the rank list below.
Each panelist submitted his/her list of the Top 25 recruiting classes. Schools received 25 points for each first-place vote, 24 points for each second-place vote, on down to 1 point for each 25th-place vote. Because data for transfer students is so hard to come by, we asked the panelists to not consider transfer students in the voting process. We also tried to not include players who enrolled this spring.
Top 25 Women's Recruiting Classes (through January 10)
Here are the Winter Rankings of the top women's college recruiting classes, presented by the Tennis Recruiting Network. Point totals are shown in the right-most column - with the number of first-place votes in parentheses. All commitments reported through January 10, 2010 are included.
Also Receiving Votes
Other women's programs receiving votes are: North Carolina (61), Auburn(32), Wisconsin (29), Boston College (23), Miami (FL) (20), Minnesota (12),Columbia (10), Amherst (7), Santa Clara (7), Cal Poly (6), Emory (6), LSU(4), Penn (4), and Denver (1).
Dawgs Lead the Pack
Our 18 panelists had a hard time agreeing on who should be at the top - the first-place votes were spread across seven different programs. The Duke Blue Devils, defending national champions and No. 1 in the Campbell's/ITA Rankings, received the most first-place votes. But our voters gave the nod to the Georgia Bulldogs as the top recruiting class for 2010.
Head coach Jeff Wallace, the nation's winningest active women's tennis coach and the 2009 Wilson/ITA National Coach of the Year, leads a Georgia program that has been a premier program for years, bringing home two NCAA titles. The Bulldogs went 27-3 in 2009, capturing their third straight SEC tournament title and reaching the Final Four in College Station, Tex. They stand at No. 4 in the latest ITA rankings.
Although Georgia has its sights set on a return trip to the Final Four in 2010 - this time on their home courts in Athens - the future also looks bright for the Bulldogs. Coach Wallace and Coach Frank Polito have put together a three-member class consisting of Blue Chip athletes Kate Fuller and Lilly Kimbell and 4-Star prospect Rachael Hart. Our voters rated those three as the top class for 2010. We carried commitment announcements for Fullerand Kimbell earlier this year.
Top 10 Tour
Georgia has a lot of company from the SEC at the top of the rankings. TheAlabama Crimson Tide (No. 3 in the rankings), Florida Gators (No. 5), andTennessee Volunteers (No. 9) are all in the top 10, with Alabama and Florida both earning first-place votes.
The Duke Blue Devils, perhaps the hottest team in the country, come in at No. 2, while the ever-present Stanford Cardinal secured a three-player class to secure the No. 4 spot.
Rounding out the top 10 are Michigan (No. 6), Yale (No. 7), Notre Dame (No. 8), and USC (No. 10).
Conference Breakdown
The SEC leads all conferences with five programs in the Winter Rankings.Vanderbilt checks in at No. 15 to join the four programs in the top 10.
Other conferences with multiple teams are the ACC (4 programs), Ivy League (4), Pac-10 (4), Big 10 (3), and Big 12 (3).
UC Davis from the Big West Conference - No. 18 on our list - distinguishes itself as the only team outside the high-major conferences in the rankings.
Panelists for January 2010
The panelists for this voting period are shown below alphabetically. Please join us in thanking them for donating their time and talents to this effort.
- Joe Braden, Director of Tennis at Schwartz Tennis Center, Purdue University, Vice-President of Central Indiana Tennis Association, USPTA Member
- Sonny Dearth, Daily Press newspaper and dailypress.com Web site in Newport News, Va.
- Sally Grabham, National Tournament Director, USTA Winter Nationals
- Granger Huntress, Texas College Tennis blog, Communications/IT manager for USTA/Texas
- Larry Jackson, Director, Dayton Center Courts and Tennis Academy, National Tournament Director
- Adam Jasick, Director of Junior Tennis at Indian Wells Tennis Garden in Indian Wells, CA, National Tournament Director, PTR National Tester and Clinician, USA Tennis High Performance Coaching Program Graduate
- Pua Johnson, USTA National and ITA Collegiate Referee
- Ali Jones, Contributor to TennisRecruiting.net.
- Ernie Katko, Director at Herrmann Tennis Academy, USTA High Performance Coach, USPTA, USPTR
- David "The Koz" Kozlowski, Inside Tennis With The Koz, The Tennis Channel
- Patty Lambropoulos, Junior Tennis Coordinator, College Park Athletic Club, National Tournament Director, Chicago District Board of Director and Endorser, Midwest Junior Competion Committee.
- Colette Lewis, ZooTennis.com, USTA Hardcourts
- Marc Lucero, Contributor to TennisRecruiting.net, Private Coach, Former Princeton assistant tennis coach
- Phil Parrish, Tennis Director, The Longfellow Club, National Tournament Director, Former College Coach
- Robert Sasseville, National Tournament Director, Girls' 14 Nationals, USTA National Referee
- Kathy Sell, Former head coach, Princeton women's tennis, private coach
- Clayton Taylor, Director of U.S. ITF Hardcourt Championships, Director of Tennis at The Atlantic Club,
- Julie Wrege, TennisInformation.com, TennisRecruiting.net, former USTA National Tournament Director and ranking chair
Signing Day, Then More Rankings
With this list, the Tennis Recruiting Network concludes its Winter Recruiting Class Rankings. But we will be back in the spring - shortly after the Spring Signing Day - with updated rankings. At that time, we will also publish the first of our "mid-major" rankings that feature programs outside of the seven power conferences.
Also, keep in mind that there is a lot of time left in the recruiting season. Look for teams to rise - and fall - in the rankings once more commitments are in.
