Virginia Men's Tennis Signs Mitchell Frank

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CHARLOTTESVILLE – The Virginia men’s tennis team announced the signing of Mitchell Frank (Annandale, Va.) to a National Letter of Intent. Frank, one of the top junior players in the United States, will join the Cavaliers next fall.

“I chose Virginia because I felt that the professional attitude and atmosphere the tennis program brought would be very important for me to develop into a successful professional player,” said Frank. “Brian [Boland], Andres [Pedroso] and Scott [Brown] all have a lot of experience in coaching top level players, and I feel that they can help me reach my maximum potential. Also, I felt that still being in the area would allow me to still communicate with my current coaches who have helped me get to where I am today. As a result, along with the excellent academic reputation that UVa brings to table, I felt that Virginia was the perfect fit for me.”

Frank is ranked as the No. 2 recruit in the Class of 2011 by tennisrecruiting.net. He played in all four junior grand slams this year, reaching the round of 16 of the US Open Juniors and the Australian Open Juniors. During his career, Frank has been ranked as high as No. 5 in the world junior rankings.

He is the fifth blue chip recruit (as ranked by tennisrecruiting.net) from Northern Virginia to commit to UVa under Brian Boland, joining Treat Huey, Michael Shabaz, Drew Courtney and Justin Shane.

“We are pleased to announce that Mitchell Frank will be joining our program,” said Boland. “Mitchell is a person of high character, is an outstanding student and has extremely high goals for his tennis well beyond the college game. Our staff was continually impressed with Mitchell and his family throughout the entire recruiting process and we look forward to working with them to achieve Mitchell’s goals and dreams. We are excited he is joining former player Treat Huey and current players Justin Shane, Drew Courtney and Micheal Shabaz to carry on the tradition of bringing in the best players from our own backyard. Mitchell comes from a great training center in College Park, Md., where he was coached by Vesa Ponkka, who has done an outstanding job developing his game and preparing him for the next step in his career. We look forward to working with Mitchell.”