The Falcons are set to have their home-opener, the BGSU Invitational, this Friday and Saturday, Sept. 21-22. The two-day, nine-team event will take place at Keefe courts, with play beginning at 9 a.m. each day.
The Falcons will host a field that includes Cincinnati, Cleveland State, Duquesne, IPFW, IUPUI, Miami, Toledo and Xavier. The tournament will consist of seven singles and four doubles flights. Team scores will not be kept but individual champions will be crowned.
“I’m excited to play at home and have our home crowd with us,” said senior Maddy Eccleston.
The entire team will participate in the BGSU Invitational. The roster for Head Coach Penny Dean consists of seniors and co-captains Eccleston and Mary Hill, as well as Katie Grubb and Jade Johnson, juniors Nikki Chiricosta and Emily Reulandand freshmen Katie Brozovich and Drew Fillis.
“I’m looking forward to all eight players playing singles and doubles and seeing how they compete,” Dean said.
Last week at the Muirfield Invitational, BG enjoyed success all around as the team combined to go 16-9 overall, 11-6 in singles and 5-3 in doubles play. Reuland advanced to semi-finals in singles and to the championship in doubles with teammate Chiricosta.
“In terms of building off it [Muirfield Invitational], I just want to keep the momentum going,” Chiricosta said. “Usually at the BG invite I’m extremely nervous because it’s my first tournament and I haven’t seen any competition yet, so it’s good that I’ve gotten some exposure. Hopefully I can use that positively and continue with my successful play.”
This year marks the first since the 1997-98 season that BG hasn’t opened the season at home with the invitational. But Coach Dean is glad her team was able to open the season with such a tough tournament.
“Playing at the Muirfield Invitational builds our confidence high at the beginning of the year, which is a great thing,” Dean said. “We just have to be careful not to become over confident and need to build on what we were able to accomplish there.”
This past year at the invitational the Falcons were able to win a total of five flight championships and had a combined record of 27-6. Reuland led the way by winning her singles and doubles flights. She has a 12-0 record in her collegiate career, and won two singles and two doubles championships.
Seniors Grubb and Eccleston also won singles championships for the second year, and Chiricosta finished it off by winning the top singles flight.
This year’s invitational features returning champions from other schools in singles champions Andrea Wolf and Ally Westling of Xavier, Chandler Consonary of Duquesne and Alex Power of Cleveland State, as well as doubles champions Chrissy Coffman and Lexy Pitt of Toledo. However, Coffman and Pitt are not scheduled to compete as a doubles team.
The invitational is the second of four total tourneys on the Falcons’ fall schedule. BG will head to Toledo for the Rocket Invitational (Oct. 12-13) and to Kalamazoo, Mich., for the WMU Super Challenge (Nov. 9-11).