NCAA Update: Canadian Men Feature on Top Teams

Photo : @UKMensTennis

Almost two months into the team part of the NCAA season and Canadians feature prominently among the best schools, particularly on the men’s side.

Six American universities in the men’s and women’s Top 10s have Canadians on their roster as the team season heats up.

The NCAA season is broken up into sections. It started last fall when the new school year began in September. The latter months of 2023 were spent on tournaments, while the new year is mainly a normal team-vs-team schedule you would see in other team sports.

Let’s catch up with the latest news from Canadians competing in the NCAA.

Men’s

There is a common thread amongst the top teams in the men’s division: they all have Canadians on them.

Five of the Top 10 men’s teams in the NCAA rankings feature Canadian players, including the top two. No.1-ranked Ohio State has Justin Boulais, while Duncan Chan plays for No. 2 TCU.

Four Canadians feature on the roster of No. 6 Kentucky, two are a part of No. 9 Arizona, and former national champion Cleeve Harper plays for No. 10 Texas.

At No. 6 in doubles, Harper has the best ranking in any discipline among the Canadian men. The 2022 national champion has a 13-6 overall record in doubles this season, with most of those results coming alongside Eliot Spizzirri, who is the No. 1 men’s singles player in the country. Harper has played in the No. 1 doubles position every week of the season in 2024.

Taha Baadi is the top-ranked Canadian singles player at No. 24. Baadi plays for the University of Kentucky, which has a history with Canadian players including Gabriel Diallo and Liam Draxl.

2024 has been a good year for the 22-year-old. Since the calendar flipped, he is 6-2 with five of those eight matches coming in the No. 1 slot for Kentucky. He has had a bit of bad luck of late with his last two matches being abandoned and the one before being a loss.

Boulais is the only other Canadian with a singles ranking in the NCAA at No. 37. He started the season 7-0 (with four abandoned matches) before finally being handed his first loss in a matchup with TCU earlier this week. Boulais has primarily played as the top team’s No. 2 option, although he is 2-0 when playing as the No. 1 player.

Chan is a freshman on the No. 2 team, TCU. He has an overall 5-3 record this season in singles, seven of those matches coming in tournaments in the fall. Since the start of the year, he has only made one start for TCU but picked up an easy win as the No. 4 against Abilene Christian University.

The Freshman has seen more action in the doubles, where he has a 17-8 record and is ranked 31^st alongside Lui Maxted.

Women

Former National Training Centre alumni Mia Kupres of Texas A&M University is the top-ranked Canadian in both singles and doubles.

In singles, she is 11-6 on the season including 9-2 in 2024, having won nine of her last 10 matches. The 20-year-old is currently ranked No. 29.

Kupres is currently ranked fourth in the NCAA in doubles, alongside American partner Mary Stoiana. The pair are 14-2 in the 2023-24 season, including 8-1 (with one abandoned match) since the calendar flipped. At No. 4, Kupres owns the highest ranking of any Canadian in the NCAA.

Jessica Alsola is the second-highest ranked Canada just a little bit behind Kupres at No. 35, representing the University of California, Berkeley. She is 15-8 this season and has regularly played in the one or two position for her school.

However, she has had a string of bad luck of late. In her last five matches, she lost two and the other three had to be abandoned. Her last victory came just over a month ago against USC.

Alsola beat Kupres when they met back in October in straight sets.

There is one all-Canadian pair that had success early in the NCAA this season, that being the University of Virginia’s team of Annabelle Xu and Melodie Collard, currently ranked 11th in the nation.

The pair have an 8-8 record this season together, although they have not played together as much of late. Their last match as a pair came in November 2023. Since, Xu has primarily partnered with Elaine Chervinsky in the No. 1 doubles role for Virginia, while Collard is playing with Sara Ziodato.

Xu and Chervinsky are 4-4 in 2024, while Collard and Ziodato are 3-3.

Virginia is currently No. 6 overall, the highest-ranked women’s team with Canadians on the roster, with an 8-2 record in the team season that began in January. They started 6-0 before losing to the University of Michigan, the No. 2 team in the country. Michigan has accounted for both of Virginia’s losses in 2024.

Ohio State, which features Canadians Teah Chavez and Alessia Cau, comes in just behind at No. 7. No. 12 is Auburn, which is Ariana Arseneault’s team. Alsola’s Berkeley is No. 16 with Kupres’ Texas A&M at No. 19.

Click here to view all the Canadian rankings in the NCAA.

Written By

Pete Borkowski