UNC’s Jamie Loeb Finishes Among Top ITA Players of the Year

June 3, 2015 | By New York Tennis Magazine Staff
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Photo credit: Adam Wolfthal

With the 2014-2015 Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) season officially over, UCLA's Robin Anderson and Oklahoma's Axel Alvarez Llamas finished the year as the nation's top players in the final Oracle/ITA National Singles Rankings. Final regional rankings for team, singles and doubles were also released.

Among the top players, local North Carolina's Jamie Loeb from Ossining, N.Y. and the University of Virginia's Julia Elbaba from Oyster Bay, N.Y. ranked in the women's top 25, while Wake Forest's Noah Rubin from Rockville Centre, N.Y. and Columbia University's Winston Lin from Williamsville, N.Y. ranked in the men's top 25. Rubin, who came in ranked fifth in the year-end Division I Men's Singles rankings, was the only freshman to crack the top 10.

The Oracle/ITA Collegiate Tennis Rankings are a key component of the recently established Oracle Collegiate Tennis Tour, administered by the ITA and will be used as the primary criteria for singles and doubles selections into the Oracle/ITA Masters, the first national collegiate championship of the 2015 fall season.  

Oklahoma's Alvarez Llamas, a junior, finished the season at number one in the Oracle/ITA Division I National Men's Singles Rankings. He started the season by winning his second consecutive USTA/ITA Central Regional Singles Championship and advancing to the quarterfinals of the USTA/ITA National Indoor Intercollegiate Championship. In the spring, Alvarez Llamas strung together 23 straight dual-match singles wins, out-muscling his 13-match streak last year. The junior finished the season 39-6 in singles and also garnered the number eight spot in the doubles rankings with his partner, Dane Webb.

Robin Anderson, the top-ranked player in the preseason rankings, posted a 27-3 singles record as a senior and held the number one ranking for the final seven editions. In the fall, she was champion of the Riviera/ITA Women's All-American Championships, adding to titles in previous seasons that include USTA/ITA Southwest Regional Singles and Doubles Championships and the USTA/ITA National Indoor Intercollegiate Singles Championship. MVP of UCLA's 2014 NCAA Championship season, Anderson registered over 200 combined win during her collegiate career with a singles record of 127-15 and a 100-39 mark in doubles.

In women's doubles, Erin Routliffe & Maya Jansen of Alabama achieve the year-end number one ranking for the second straight season on the heels of their second consecutive NCAA Doubles Championship. They became the first female duo to defend its NCAA doubles title since 1999 and only the third to successfully win back-to-back titles. Ranked number one in the fall preseason rankings, Routliffe & Jansen fell in January, but regained the top ranking in mid-April for the final four editions this season. The sophomore-junior pairing has a two-year record together of 57-8.

Baylor's Julian Lenz & Diego Galeano finished as the top-ranked men's doubles team. Lenz and Galeano, who had not played together prior to this season, went 26-3 and advanced to the NCAA Semifinals. The junior-senior duo rattled off 19 consecutive victories during an unbeaten streak that lasted nearly three full months. Their final six wins were against teams that finished in the Top 30 of the Oracle/ITA Rankings and included a victory over the 2014 NCAA Doubles Champions, Tennessee's Hunter Reese & Mikelis Libietis. 


New York Tennis Magazine Staff
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