Brandon Carpico and Nikita Filin[1](Ohio State) v Michael Andre and Matteo Antonescu(Indiana)
Reese Brantmeier and Alanis Hamilton[1](UNC) v DJ Bennett and Ava Esposito[2](Auburn)
The ITA Women’s Division I Kickoff Draft was held today, with teams ranked 17-84 at the recent season’s end deciding which of the 14 host sites they would like to travel to as they look to earn a spot in the 2027 ITA Team Indoor Championships in February.
Because hosts Michigan and Ohio State finished the year inside the Top 16, neither host needed the automatic qualification, giving No. 17 Arizona State the first choice among the 16 sites. The Sun Devils chose the University of Southern California, as did No. 18 Florida, with No. 25 Clemson the fourth team traveling to Los Angeles. Despite that formidable quartet of teams, USC, which finished the season ranked 13, was not the first host site to fill up. That honor belongs to crosstown rival UCLA, ranked 15th, who had No. 20 UCF, No. 21 TCU and No. 22 Cal elect to head to Westwood.
No. 16 Vanderbilt will also host three Top 35 teams, with No. 19 Tennessee, No. 28 Stanford and No. 33 Arizona heading to Nashville.
Three Top 50 seeds passed, electing not to participate in the Kickoff Weekend and therefore not eligible to play the Team Indoor Championships: No. 31 Notre Dame, No. 43 Ole Miss and No. 47 Iowa.
Top teams who were not attractive to those in draft postitions were NC State(No. 8), Pepperdine(No. 9) and Auburn (No. 2), and many teams passed rather than go as a No. 4 seed to a top team, with No. 84 North Alabama the last participant, as the No. 4 seed at North Carolina.
The complete list of women’s teams that will be competing at the 16 sites January 22-24, 2027, can be found here.
The men’s draft begins Thursday at noon, and can be followed here.
The Division I ITA Player of Year Awards, which weren’t included in yesterday’s announcement, were confirmed today in the ITA’s release of its POY winners in all divisions: wheelchair, community college, California community college, NAIA, Division III, Division II and Division I. The complete list can be found here.
One of the few Division I head coaching positions open this spring has been filled, with the University of Illinois announcing Elizabeth Lumpkin Robinson as the new leader of the women’s program in Champaign Urbana. Lumpkin Robinson, who played at UCLA, spent the past three years as head coach at University of Illinois-Chicago; before that she was an assistant/associate head coach at Oregon.
Both top seeds were upset today in Irvine California, the fourth stop on the seven-week SoCal Pro Series joint $15K tournaments.
Kaylan Bigun(UCLA), who won the M15 titles in Week One in Lakewood and Week Three in Los Angeles, was beaten in the first round today by recent Yale graduate Vignesh Gogineni 3-6, 6-4, 6-1.
In the first round of the W15, Sofia Shapatava of Georgia, who was also the top seed last week and also lost in the first round in Los Angeles, dropped a 7-5, 6-1 decision to 18-year-old Isabella Marton of Canada today.