Gorloks Earn At-Large Bid To Division III Tournament

The Webster University women's tennis team has been selected as an at-large selection into this year's NCAA Division III Women's Championship Tournament and will compete in the Sewanee Regional in Sewanee, Tenn., this coming weekend.

The Gorloks, who are sporting a 12-5 overall record and claimed both the regular season and tournament championships in the St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, were a Pool "B" selection in this year's tournament and will face Hanover (Ind.) College in the first round on Friday, May 11 at 10 a.m. at the Bruton-Guerry Tennis Center on the campus of Sewanee University, who is serving as the host institution's for this year's first three rounds of play in the 49-team tournament.

All of the winners from each of the eight pods in this year's tournament will advance to the national team championship finals on May 21-23, which are being held at the Biszantz Tennis Center in Claremont, Calif. The national championship finals are being hosted by Claremont McKenna-Harvey Mudd Scripps Colleges. 

Webster, who is making its fourth all-time appearance in the NCAA Tournament and first since earning an automatic bid as the SLIAC Champion in 2015, is 1-3 all-time in the NCAA Tournament with its lone win coming over Hanover, 5-0, in the first round of the 2015 tournament, which was also played at Sewanee. 

With its at-large bid, the women's tennis team becomes just the second Webster athletics program in school history to earn an at-large bid into the NCAA Tournament as the baseball team earned at-large bids into the NCAA Tournament in both 2015 and 2017 as they haven't won the SLIAC Tournament since 2014. 

Leading the way for the Gorloks is 2018 SLIAC Player of the Year Monica Behrle (Atlanta, Ga./East Paulding), who posted an 18-5 record in singles, including a 14-3 mark at the No. 1 spot and was a combined 15-6 in doubles, including teaming with junior Madison Watts (Rogersville, Mo./Logan-Rogersville) to post a 13-3 mark at the No. 1 doubles spot. She enters the NCAA Tournament as the school's all-time leader in both singles and doubles wins as she has posted a 69-22 career record in singles and is 58-30 in doubles. 

In addition to Behrle, four other Gorloks earned First-Team All-SLIAC honors this season. Those four First-Team All-SLIAC performers were Watts at No. 2 singles, senior Jesse Steffens-Willis(St. Louis, Mo./Rockwood Summit) at No. 3 singles, junior Sara Rice (Mahomet, Ill./Mahomet-Seymour) at No. 4 singles and freshman Maggie Federhofer (St. Louis, Mo./Lutheran South) at No. 5 singles. In addition, Behrle and Watts earned first-team honors at No. 2 doubles. Webster's other two doubles teams of Rice and Federhofer at No. 2 and Steffens-Willis and senior Robin Bolme (Smyrna, Tenn.) at No. 3 earned Second-Team All-SLIAC honors. 

Watts is 8-5 at the No. 2 singles spot and was 9-10 overall on the season in singles and 15-5 in doubles playing with Behrle at the No. 1 spot in the line-up. Steffens-Willis posted an 11-7 overall record in singles, including a 10-3 mark at the No. 3 spot and went 3-1 at No. 3 doubles with Bolme, while Rice went 13-4 in singles, including going 12-1 at the No. 4 spot in the line-up and partnered with Federhofer to post a 5-3 doubles record at the No. 2 spot and Federhofer went 9-7 overall  in singles, including an 8-4 mark at the No. 5 singles spot. 

Webster hasn't played a match since picking up a 5-3 win over Westminster (Mo.) College in the championship match of the SLIAC Tournament on April 28 at the Dwight Davis Tennis Center in Forest Park. The win was Webster's four straight victory overall and its sixth in its last seven with the only loss being a 9-0 setback to Wheaton (Ill.) on April 13 in Hanover Park, Ill. Wheaton is one of two NCAA Tournament teams the Gorloks faced this season as they picked up a 5-4 win over Nazareth in Hilton Head, S.C., during its spring break trip on March 16.
 

Hanover, who is making its fourth all-time NCAA Tournament appearance and first since 2016, is sporting a 15-5 overall record. The Panthers earned its spot in the NCAA Tournament by winning its fourth Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference tournament title the last five years back in the fall. Hanover hasn't played a match since earning a 7-2 win over Wittenberg on April 17. The Panthers posted a 6-3 record during the spring season with one of those losses being an 8-1 setback to Sewanee on Feb. 18. 

 

Sewanee (21-4), who was the champion from the Southern Athletic Association and is ranked 12th in the latest ITA Tennis national rankings, will face WashU (13-7), who is ranked 13th nationally in the ITA Tennis poll, on Saturday, May 12 in the other second-round match-up at Sewanee. 

Those two second round winners from Saturday's matches will meet in a third-round match on Sunday, May 13 to determine which team will advance from the Sewanee pod to the national championship finals.