Buffs Fall Schedule Begins

BOULDER – The 2023-24 tennis season is beginning this weekend for the Colorado Buffaloes in San Francisco at the Battle in the Bay Classic.

While the fall slate is made up of individual tournaments the team will look to use this time to grow as a team as well.

"Our first event of the season is coming up, but it's always continuous," head coach Anthony Pham on the start of the season. "We just finished up our first week of practice and it was very positive. I thought everyone looked good from a standpoint that they put in a lot of work over the summer. That was the goal but was still very positive to see that be put into training, practice, and fitness. Now it's just a matter of understanding that we want to continue to elevate our program and as individuals. We want to pick up where we were at the end of last season, keep improving and put us in a good position to have a good spring."

They will start that Thursday, September 12-15 at the Battle in the Bay Classic with two seniors Aya El Sayed and Mila Stanojevic invited to compete. Last season, El Sayed went 3-2 in singles and 1-2 in doubles with Stanojevic who went 1-3 in singles.

"Our expectations they don't change," Pham said on the expectations going into the tournament. "Obviously we want to go there and have the best results we can, the level of the tournament is very high. I think for them having been there, Aya [El Sayed] in her third year and Mila [Stanojevic] her second year they have a better understanding of the expectations as a team, a program, and for themselves."

Battle in the Bay is a tournament full of high-caliber players from across the country who must be invited to be able to compete. Part of the reason for the high level of competition is due to the winner of the tournament getting a wild card bid to a 60-thousand-dollar professional tournament the following week.

"We always talk about opportunities, and this is just another opportunity for us," Pham commented on playing in a high-quality tournament. "We tell the team and our players all the time that we're going to give them a lot of opportunities to play in these types of tournaments and against high level players."

For the other seven players their season will begin the Following in Waco, Texas at the Baylor Invite September 20-22.
The remainder of the fall goes the ITA All-American Championship September 22-29 followed by a month off before the ITA Mountain Regional Championships in Las Cruces, New Mexico this season.

The Buffs will then travel to Fort Myers, Florida for the Florida Gulf Coast University Invite November 1-3. The following week Colorado will split with some going to Los Angles for the ITA Fall Sectional November 7-10 and others going to the Cal Poly SLO Invite November 8-10.

The fall season will be wrapped up with the first NCAA Individual Championships occurring in the fall instead of after the season in the spring. The event will be back in Waco, Texas November 19-24.

"This fall we need to continue to keep getting better," Pham said on the fall slate. "We've got a ton of opportunities for our players to challenge themselves, but also to represent Colorado. Starting with Battle in the Bay and the Baylor Invite, there are a lot of good teams out there, a lot of good players. Then we have regionals then we go down to Florida and hopefully we get a handful of players to qualify for the NCAA Individual Championships in November. The team is excited to get out there again and get competing."

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Players Mentioned

Aya El Sayed

Mila Stanojevic