TEMPE, Ariz. (May 20, 2019) – Northern Arizona women's tennis junior
Chiara Tomasetti was selected as the ITA Mountain Regional Player to Watch in the NCAA Division I Regional Awards released by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association over the weekend.
ITA coaches selected a Player to Watch from each of the 12 ITA regions. The regional Players to Watch are expected to be a top returning contender, but has not yet won an ITA National event. Players must have been ranked nationally. North Carolina's Alexa Graham was named the ITA National Player to Watch among the 12 regional candidates.
Tomasetti was simply dominant during her record-breaking 2018-19 season, posting an overall season singles record of 39-7 (fall and spring). During the spring dual season, the Roesrath, Germany native recorded a 21-2 mark at the No. 1 position and set a new program record for dual singles wins in a season.
"I've said this many times this year and I will say it again, Chiara deserves this recognition more than anyone," said head coach
Ewa Bogusz. "She has outworked a lot of players. Her standards are very high and she's a competitor. All of that produced great results. I'm happy that coaches in our region saw it as well."
Tomasetti won four of seven matches against nationally-ranked opponents during her junior campaign, including two wins over UNLV's then-ranked No. 49 Aiwen Zhu – who was named the Mountain Region's Senior Player of the Year. She also pushed South Carolina's Ingrid Gamarra Martins, currently ranked fourth in the country, in a close two-set loss at the ITA National Fall Championships.
The Big Sky Most Valuable Player and unanimous All-Big Sky First Team honoree was ranked as high as No. 75 nationally in the spring.
Tomasetti's show-stopping season began in the fall when she became the first Lumberjack ever to win the ITA Mountain Regional singles championship which automatically qualified her for the National Fall Championships. In the fall, she also notched a tournament win at the UNLV Invitational and finished runner-up at the ITA Bedford Cup in the Mountains tourney.
She opened the dual season with 18 straight singles wins and clinched NAU's first Big Sky tournament championship in 20 years by dealing Idaho's Marianna Petrei her only conference loss in her four-year career.
A week after Tomasetti's championship-clinching victory, she unseated Petrei as the Big Sky's MVP.
Tomasetti will enter her senior season with the 'Jacks in 2019-20 with an incredible dual record of 57-9. She is just six wins shy of breaking Susanna Wallin's program record of 62 dual victories.
