Four Blue Devils start play at ITA National Indoors

The ITA National Indoor Championship is described as the hardest collegiate tournament to qualify for, but four Blue Devils defied the odds and earned the right to travel to Flushing, N.Y. Thursday for the first round of play.

In order to be eligible for the nation’s most important fall tournament, athletes must either be ranked in the nation’s top five, have won an ITA Regional, or have made it to the quarterfinals of the ITA All-American Championships in early October in Tulsa, Okla. Duke’s ability to send four players to New York is a sign of the program’s strength.

Junior Henrique Cunha and sophomore Chris Mengel will be representing Duke in the men’s tournament. Both players qualified individually for the singles draw—Mengel won the ITA Carolinas Regional tournament while Cunha’s No. 4 ranking earned him his slot—and they will also play together as a doubles team after winning the regional. Mengel and Cunha have had a stellar season thus far and are headed into the tournament eager for the chance to take on their competition.

“I’m really looking forward to playing in this tournament,” Cunha said. “All of the 32 players here…won their regionals so they must be good players, but I also did well in my region…. There won’t be any easy matches.”

Cunha is heading into this year’s tournament with the experience he gained from his trip to New York last season. He was stopped in the second round, but the junior says he has gained confidence and expects to be able to advance deeper into this year’s bracket. Mengel, who paired with Cunha earlier this year in doubles, has also shown rapid improvement over the course of the season. He will need to be in top form Thursday as he faces the nation’s No. 1 player, Virginia’s Alex Domijan.

“A couple weeks before regionals, I told [Mengel] that I thought he could qualify for singles and for doubles,” men’s head coach Ramsey Smith said. “I wasn’t sure if he really believed that…but he did exactly that. He’s only lost four tennis matches since March 1st.”

On the women’s side, freshmen Beatrice Capra and Ester Goldfeld will represent the Blue Devils at the Billy Jean King National Tennis Center. Capra will compete in singles after advancing to the quarterfinals at the All-American championships, where she fell to No. 2 seed Allie Will of Florida. Capra and Goldfeld will compete in doubles after receiving a wild-card bid into the tournament despite losing in their regional tournament. Although the freshmen lack the experience that many of the older duos competing have, head coach Jamie Ashworth is hopeful that their ability to communicate will outweigh their lack of time together on the court.

“They know that they have the ability to be one of the best teams in the country,” Ashworth said. “They both know that they’re really good players and they have a really good partner in each other.”