SAN DIEGO, Calif.--The University of Hawai'i women's tennis team (11-7, 7-2 Big West) enters this week's 2022 Big West Championship as the No. 3 seed in the nine-team tournament held at the Barnes Tennis Center in San Diego, Calif. The Rainbow Wahine have a bye on Wednesday and will start play on Thursday, April 28 at 9:00 a.m. HT in a re-match against its most recent opponent, No. 6 seed CSUN in a quarterfinal match. The tourney runs from April 27 - 30. 
 

2022 BIG WEST MEN'S TENNIS CHAMPIONSHIP
MATCH SCHEDULES				Wed., Apr. 27 - FIRST ROUND: BYE Thurs., Apr. 28 - QUARTERFINALS: Match 4 - #3 Hawai'i vs. #6 CSUN Fri., Apr. 29 - SEMIFINALS: Match 7: Winner Match 4 vs. Winner Match 5 Sat., Apr. 30 - CHAMPIONSHIP: Match 8: Winner Match 6 vs. Winner Match 7
TIME				Thursday, April 28 - 9:00 a.m. HT
SITE				Barnes Tennis Center - San Diego, Calif.
TOURNAMENT CENTRAL				Tournament Central Webpage
LIVE STATS				Match 4
TOURNAMENT BRACKET				Interactive Bracket

 
LAST TIME OUT...The Rainbow Wahine closed out their regular season with a 5-2 win at CSUN this past Sunday, April 24 in Northridge. UH won the doubles point with wins on courts #2 and #3. The bottom four in UH's lineup then came through as they notched wins at No. 3, 4, 5, and 6. The match was closer than it works with three of the four singles wins being come-from-behind, three set wins and at No. 6, UH's Anna Kern edged out CSUN's Victoria Santibanez Luna by a tie-breaker and a break in a tough two-set win, 7-6 (3), 7-5.

NEWS & NOTES

• The Rainbow Wahine enter the 2022 Big West Championships on a three-match win streak. Earlier in the season, the 'Bows were riding a seven-match win streak--which included six home sweeps--and had just entered the ITA national ranking at No. 73 before they embarked on a tough roadtrip on which UH went 0-4 against top ranked teams. Hawai'i fell to #17 Stanford, #25 UC Santa Barbara, Cal Poly (who was ranked #59 the week after playing UH), and #21 USC. 
• Hawai'i finished the regular season in third place with a 7-2 Big West record. The No. 1 seed entering the tourney is UC Santa Barbara who went undefeated in conference play (17-6, 9-0 BWC). No. 2 is Cal Poly (15-6, 8-1 BWC). UCSB and CP are the only two conference teams that were able to defeat UH this year.  Both matches saw the 'Bows falling 5-2 against the Gauchos and the Mustangs.
• Under head coach Jun Hernandez, the Rainbow Wahine have hit the double-digit win mark in seven of the last nine years. The only two years not reaching the 10-win mark were 2020 when COVID-19 shut down the season in March and 2021 when UH played an abbreviated schedule due to COVID.
• HOME SWEET HOME - Hawai'i finished their home schedule winning their last seven matches with shutouts over their opponents. UH defeated Army West Point (3/10), 4-0; Bucknell (3/16 & 17) 7-0 & 7-0; UC Davis (3/25) 5-0; UC Riverside (3/26) 7-0; UC Irvine (4/9), 7-0; and Cal Lutheran (4/13) 7-0.
• Hawai'i has three seniors--Gitte Heynemans, Nidhi Surapaneni, and Tal Talya Zandberg. All three are transfers who chose to finish their collegiate careers in the 50th state.  Heynemans and Zandberg both came to UH from Arizona, while Surapeneni coming from North Texas.
• INTERNATIONALLY DIVERSE- The senior trio represent the UH team's diversity with Heynemans hailing from Brussels, Belgium; Surapeneni originally coming from Hyderabad, India; and Zandberg coming from Tiberias, Israel. The Rainbow Wahine also have players from three other countries--Léa Romian (Mirabeau, France), Satsuki Takamura (Saitama, Japan) and Ana Vilcek (Belgrade, Serbia). Five players are from the United States, Anna Kern (Corvallis, Ore.), Madison Kim (Menlo Park, Calif.), Alexis Merrill (Fairfax, Va.), Avery Williams (Keller, Texas), and Kaitlyn Ralar who is the lone local player who is from Wailuku, Maui.
• Heynemans and Zandberg lead UH with 12-6 overall singles records. Both are also 7-0 in conference matches. Heynemans has played primarily on the No. 5 court where she is6-3 in dual matches, while Zandberg has a lock on the No. 4 slot with an 8-2 record on the season. 
• In doubles, Surapaneni has a team-high 9-9 record in doubles with four different partners (Satsuki Takamura, Gitte Heynemans, Madison Kim and most recently, Ana Vilcek at CSUN last week).