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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (May 9, 1986)
Friday, May 9, 1986/The Battalion/Page 9 lEi Sports ,ggie women get CAA tennis bid A&M, SHSU to square off again • tnes- ote JC By Ken Sury Spprts Editor ^■he Southwest Conference :hai ipion Texas A&M women’s ennis team will have to take two lets of finals next week as it re- :ei\led its bid Thursday to corn- jete in the NCAA Women’s Ten- lis Championships on May 15-18. ^■he NCAA selection commit- ee gave the Aggies the No. 15 bid Forkhe 16-team tournament to be neld at the University of Texas’ ae\t Pennick-Allison Tennis Cen- :er. fexas received the No. 16 bid. Br the sixteen teams, six are ^i\«n automatic bids by being the t()|i team in their respective N’(1\A region. The remaining 10 teams receive at-large bids from thelNCAA selection committee. j^Brinity, ranked third in the na tion by the latest Head Intercolle- giat< Tennis Standings (H.I.T.S.) LMearned the automatic bid for this region. A&M is currently ranked 18th and Texas 16th, but tlieje rankings do not include the SWT Tournament. &M first-year Coach Bobby Kltjinecke, who shared SWC Coach-of-the-Year honors with iTf.r’s Roland Ingram, said he’s glad to have the NCAA berth, but reaji/.es his team faces a difficult Held. ..ibem “We've got some good players,” t mucfi K.\||necke said, “and we play good 'ckintc: tennis. But it'll he tough: ittan[W:A|l\ uv \hm^v can happen. Before ;reenoi;Wye played Northwestern (an ;r layer i Aggie 6-‘l win during spring break over the then-No. 6 team) nobody irtheS thoiight we could win that.” ncluded rf. ‘^■he team competition merely expert' kicks off the women’s champion- say therCships. The 64-player singles and lackareai’the 32-team doubles competition opper tax will be held May 20-23. The selec- tUonex|*Hi<Bis will be announced May 18. ishthestW^Kleinecke said he doesn’t ex- ueverci^'pect ;m Aggie to he named for the {h. , 1 he said wf’ 11 ; u ini layer. Ad clean. Von lin came by several itoration a ge low on 1 ieve t®r on the singles draw, but thinks two dou bles teams, the No. 1 tandem of Vanne Akagi and Gaye Lynne Gensler and the No. 2 duo of Kim Labuschagne and Karen Marshall have a good chance of being selected. Both tandems earned bids in the Rolex Intercollegiate Tennis Coaches Association (I.T.C.A.) Indoor Nationals in February, which was only a 16-team field. In the I.T.C.A. Nationals, Aka gi and Gensler lost in the consola tion finals to Harvard’s Cathy Vig- na and Erika Smith, while Labus chagne and Marshall lost their first-round match to Houston’s Kathy Fox worth and Stina Almgren. But both duos had strong SWC seasons. Labuschagne and Mar shall were undefeated in their eight conference matches and Won two SWC tourney matches before losing to SMU’s Headier Hairston and Jennif er Santrock in the No. 2 doubles final. Akagi and Gensler were 5-1 in the conference (Gensler missed two matches with an injury), but lost their first-round match to SMU’s Jean Marie Sterling and Tammy Christiansen. Both tandems were named to the all-SWC squad. Labuschagne and Marshall received six of the nine ballots, while Akagi and Gensler got five votes. The NCAA Men’s Tennis Championships will be held in Athens, Ga., May 17-25. Of the Aggies, SWC No. 1 singles cham pion Kimmo Alkio has the best shot at receiving a bid. Alkio is ranked 40th in the cur rent H.I.T.S. List, but that doesn’t include his victories over No. 14 John Ross of SMU and No. 4 Bob by Blair of Arkansas during the SWC tournament. By Tom Tagliabue Sports Writer The newly crowned Southwest Conference co-champion Texas A&M baseball team will take on Sam Houston State in a Highway 30 series this weekend. The Aggies, ranked No. 12 with a 39-21 overall record, will play a three-game series against the Bear- kats, whom the Aggies have already beaten three times this season. The Aggies and Bearkats are sche duled to play a Saturday afternoon double-header at Olsen Field at 1 p.m. They will switch sites and travel to Huntsville for a Sunday single game at 2 p.m. Tickets for Saturday are $2 and student passes will be honored this weekend. Aggie Coach Mark Johnson hopes this series will give his team a com petitive edge before the SWC Tour nament, which the Ags host on May 16-18 at Olsen Field. “We want to look at it like Sam Houston is another team we’re going to compete against,” Johnson said. “I want to really compete hard because you need to get back into the swing and get that valve turned up again so you get use to it again. “So we want to make it important and play hard even though we’re going to throw a lot of pitchers, which puts us back into that Tuesday game rhythm that we’ve had before, where we’re throwing a lot of different & u y s -’’ Winning the championship, which Johnson said has improved the teams’ attitude, should be a big boost against the Bearkats. “Winning the championship — what a lift for the guys,” Johnson said. It was a great lift and it was a deserved lift. It put us in a good mood. The guys are coming out to the ballpark and they feel good about themselves and feel good about what’s been accomplished.” Johnson said finals week will pro vide a lot of distractions for the team. “We can’t put off the studies until the last minute,” Johnson said. “Next Photo by Anthony S. Casper A&M’s Fred Gegen (24) is out at second amid a A&M hosts SHSU in a double-header Saturday at cloud of dust during the Aggies’ sweep of TCU. 1 p.m., then plays in Huntsville Sunday at 2. week they’re going to have a lot of distractions. (We need to) be sure we’re studying hard now and that we’re planning ahead and not going to pull all-nighters the night before a tournament game. “(We need to) make practice count for the hour and a half or two hours we’re out here and then get back and get our priorities straight. Naturally they’re looking forward to the tour nament and they’re concerned about how they’re going to play. We just have to be mature enough to practice hard and then leave it on the field.” SWC Tournament Notes .. .Ticket sales for the SWC postseason baseball tournament are going well according to Jim Kotch of the Athletic Ticket Office. Kotch said f ,500 reserved seat tick ets, all located on the lower deck of Olsen Field, were offered and fewer than 200 per game remain. Six-game tournament tickets are $24 and indi vidual game reserved seats are $4 each. The University of Texas Athletic Department received 470 reserved seats along the first-base line and some 2,000 general admission seal Neither Arkansas nor Baylor have rc quested any tickets. The upper deck of the stadium will be general admission, Kotch said, and only 300-400 of the $3 tourtu ment tickets have been sold. Kotch advised students that then- season passes will not admit them to the series and tournament tickets must be purchased. Tickets are being sold at the G. 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