Huge D-II Tournament in Phoenix

[10isDad]

Any tennis fans in the Phoenix area should come out to Paseo Racquet Club for the annual Grand Canyon University President's Day Tennis Tournament, featuring some of the best division II men's and women's college teams.

Some of the teams participating: UC San Diego (who recently demolished D-1 UC Riverside), Hawaii Hilo, Hawaii Pacific, Sonoma State, Dallas Baptist, Western New Mexico, Montana State Billings and Grand Canyon University (who beat D-1 Northern Arizona University) and some women's only teams including Academy of Art, Dixie State, Chaminade and Cal State Los Angeles.

The tournament starts today (02/09/11) and goes through Sunday (with a couple matches on Monday, as well).

I will probably be posting pictures from the tournament within this thread.

[10isDad]

[10isDad]

[10isDad]

[10isDad]

[10isDad]

[10isDad]

[10isDad]

Grand Canyon, the host school, is so far undefeated beating Hawaii Hilo 7-2 and Montana State Billings 8-1. Today they play Hawaii Pacific, who look very strong. That match is at 9 am MST followed by a later match against Sonoma State at 3 p.m.

The pre-season ranked #34 Sonoma State Seawolves lost yesterday to Hawaii Hilo in a tough encounter.

On the women's side, Grand Canyon is also undefeated handily defeating both Hawaii Hilo and Montana State Billings. Today they face their toughest opponents in pre-season ranked #7 Hawaii Pacific at noon.

Some really good tennis so far...

[goober]

Quite a few one handed backhands... nice.

Dang I was literally down the street from there on Sunday afternoon. I could have watched some good tennis.

[10isDad]

It was a great event. Lots of very good quality teams - teams that are able to compete with some lower- to mid-echelon D-I schools.

Hawaii Pacific and UC San Diego are particularly good at #1. Western New Mexico was also a very tough team this season. Grand Canyon as already bested the number of match wins from last year and is 5-3 on the season losing close 4-5 matches to the 3 afore-mentioned teams.

None of these teams are going to be a team that's going to compete with a top 75 D-I team, but there are probably a couple hundred D-I teams they would compete with quite well and likely beat most.

The #1 guy from Hawaii Pacific (top photo), Petr Michnev, could definitely be competitive among most D-I guys. He's a beast. UCSD's #1, Erik Elliott, is also quite good.

Finally, to jump on the soapbox just a little: all those US kids who want to play college tennis need to set their sites just a little lower. D-II can be extremely competitive and these coaches want US kids... Three different coaches told me US kids don't want to play D-II because they think the tennis is weak or they think education they'll get is lacking. Neither is necessarily the case.

[TheOC]

Originally Posted by 10isDad

It was a great event. Lots of very good quality teams - teams that are able to compete with some lower- to mid-echelon D-I schools.

Hawaii Pacific and UC San Diego are particularly good at #1. Western New Mexico was also a very tough team this season. Grand Canyon as already bested the number of match wins from last year and is 5-3 on the season losing close 4-5 matches to the 3 afore-mentioned teams.

None of these teams are going to be a team that's going to compete with a top 75 D-I team, but there are probably a couple hundred D-I teams they would compete with quite well and likely beat most.

The #1 guy from Hawaii Pacific (top photo), Petr Michnev, could definitely be competitive among most D-I guys. He's a beast. UCSD's #1, Erik Elliott, is also quite good.

Finally, to jump on the soapbox just a little: all those US kids who want to play college tennis need to set their sites just a little lower. D-II can be extremely competitive and these coaches want US kids... Three different coaches told me US kids don't want to play D-II because they think the tennis is weak or they think education they'll get is lacking. Neither is necessarily the case.

The problem with D2 and D3 schools is that they are mostly small liberal arts colleges (most, not all). So many science based majors offered at large universities are lacking at those institutions. The one category that almost all D2 and D3 schools often fail to measure up is with the graduate level programs and research that is done at the majority of the larger D1 level schools. Even for undergraduates, graduate programs can help immensely because students can be involved in research labs as assistants and etc. to gain experience that many graduate and professional schools such as medical and law schools look for when selecting applicants. This was one of the major factors for my selection of a college when I had to pick between an upper-echelon D2 program where I was guaranteed a spot versus the D1 state school where I had to walk-on and had limited playing time for my first season. I knew I wasn't going to or wanted to make a career out of playing or coaching tennis, so I wanted to go some where that provided me the best opportunity to get into a graduate program.

Most of the schools you have mentioned in this tournament fall under this category. Grand Canyon is not a very large university and lacks many of the opportunities that a Tier 1 Research institution such as the University of Arizona in Tucson has. The only school that I would stipulate would fall in the category of a high level research institution would be UCSD.

On the other hand, you are absolutely correct that the competition for guys at the D2 and D3 levels are often just as high, if not higher than most D1 schools when you look at the top D2 and D3 programs. I'm actually familiar with a good number of the guys players from some of the schools from watching them in junior events. From my experience however, there is a significant drop off from girls D1 competition and D2/D3 in comparison to the guys. I think it is because it is more of the guys teams who are recruiting foreign players versus girls programs, so many more American girls can find D1 teams... As well as the fact that there are more girls D1 programs.