July 16, 2007

KINGSTON, R.I. - Five home matches and the opportunity to defend the New England Championship title highlight the 2007 Rhode Island women's tennis schedule, which was released today by head coach Sandy Wood. Having graduated just one senior, the Rams will return a wealth of experience and should continue to emerge among the best programs in the region.

"We should have another strong season coming off last year's record of 14-6," said Wood. "We lost #1 Lara Maurer to graduation but will return #2-8. In addition, we have added three talented freshmen who will be vying for playing time and can likely help us in the middle of the lineup, giving us excellent depth."

Rhody will open the 2007 season at the Army Invitational, Sept 14-16, before Division II Bryant visits Kingston on Sept. 19. URI then heads to Hamden, Conn. for the Quinnipiac Invitational (Sept. 23-25).

The Rams will host dual matches with Atlantic 10 Saint Joseph's (Oct. 29) and La Salle (Oct. 6) as well as non-conference foes Monmouth (Oct. 7) and Holy Cross (Oct. 10). Rhody's lone dual match on the road is an October 3rd trip to Providence.

Rhode Island will look to defend its New England Championship title at Fairfield, Oct. 13-14, before competing at the Brown Invitational (Oct. 20-21) and closing out the fall season at Dartmouth's Big Green Invitational (Oct. 27-29).

"The fall season is designed with an abundance of tournaments as well as dual matches to sharpen competition skills and play a lot of tennis early on," explained Wood. "Our goal is to build up to playing the stronger teams in the spring when our girls have had plenty of matches under their belt and have had time to learn our system and work on their game. We will have plenty of talent but also a great deal of youth (no seniors) so our training will be important to help the team reach its potential. The ladies have a great attitude and work hard so I'm sure we will have another great season."

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HEAD COACH: VAL VILLUCCI

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• valerie.villucci@gmail.com

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