Pacific West Conference Women's Tennis Championships, hosted by Dominican University

Dominican University of California will be the host team for seven other teams, including perennial powerhouse BYU-Hawaii, the No. 1 ranked team in NCAA Division II, at the Pacific West Conference Women’s Tennis Championships Thursday through Saturday, April 19-21.

The event, the first NCAA Division II tournament of its kind staged in the San Francisco Bay Area, will be contested at Marin Tennis Club, 925 Belle Avenue in San Rafael next to the Dominican campus. It will feature players from eight states and 21 foreign countries plus BYU-Hawaii, which is 21-0 this season and, in the past 16 years, has won nine national titles -- seven in NCAA Div. II -- with a remarkable team dual record of 482-8.

Joining Dominican and the undefeated Seasiders in the eight-team tournament are Hawai’i Pacific University, University of Hawai’i-Hilo, Chaminade University, Grand Canyon University, Dixie State College, and Academy of Art University.

Singles and doubles competition begins on April 19 with quarterfinal matches from 12:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. on the 12-court complex at Marin Tennis Club. Host Dominican, the No. 8 seed, will face top-seeded BYU-Hawaii at 12:30 p.m. on Courts 2-7.

Other quarterfinal match-ups are No. 2 seed Hawai'i Pacific vs. No. 7 seed Dixie State, No. 3 seed Grand Canyon vs. No. 6 seed Hawai'i Hilo and No. 4 seed Academy of Art vs. No. 5 seed Chaminade.

Semifinal matches are scheduled from 12:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. on April 20 and team championship finals matches will be played from 1 p.m. to  7:00 p.m. on April 21 at Marin Tennis Club.

Consolation finals matches on April 21 will be played at the San Rafael High School courts, 185 Mission Avenue, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

The host Lady Penguins are led by sophomore Irina Morozova, a native of Ukraine who is Dominican’s top player out of West Bay High School in San Carlos. She and her doubles partner – Fair Oaks’ Gaby Verspieren, a transfer from NCAA Div. I Gonzaga – have a winning record as the Lady Penguins’ No. 1 team.

The No. 1 player at the PacWest Women’s Tennis Championships will be BYU-Hawaii junior I-Hsuan (Annie) Hwang from Tainan City, Taiwan. As of April 16, she is undefeated (37-0) in her two-year career with the Seasiders. Teammate Shoaozhuo (Sherry) Li, a freshman, is undefeated (12-0) as BYU-Hawaii’s No. 2 singles player this year and Marietta Tuionetoa, a freshman out of Menlo-Atherton High School, is 16-1 as a singles player for the Seasiders. Tuionetoa and her doubles partner, senior Yuan Jia from Zhengzhou, China, are 19-0 this season.

Other No. 1 players in the three-day tournament at Dominican are Grand Canyon’s Katharina Mittag from Germany, Hawai’i-Pacific’s Zora Vlckova from the Czech Republic, Chaminade’s Yanita Arnaudova from Bulgaria, Academy of Art’s Kunkanda “Cartoon” Phukchampa from Thailand, Hawai’i-Hilo’s Melanie Viriyapunt from Santa Ana and Dixie State’s Krista Anderson from St. George, Utah.

Admission is $10 for a three-day tournament pass, $5 per day.

For more information, visit the Tournament Homepage or contact Patrick Huser, Tournament Operations Director, at 415-485-3219 or e-mail patrick.huser@dominican.edu.

The tournament is sponsored by Macys.com, State Farm Insurance, Brad Gilbert’s Tennis Nation in San Rafael, Post Street Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine in Corte Madera, and Private Wealth Partners of Larkspur.