Carl Söderlund Earns No. 3 Seed in NCAA Singles Championship
NCAA Singles and Doubles Selections
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. –Virginia men’s tennis junior Carl Soderlund (Stockholm, Sweden) has been selected to compete in the 2019 NCAA Men’s Tennis Singles Championship, being held May 20-25 at the USTA National Campus in Orlando, Fla.
Senior Henrik Wiersholm (Kirkland, Wash.) and freshman Brandon Nakashima (San Diego) have been named as first alternates to compete in the NCAA Men’s Tennis Doubles Championship and could earn a spot in the field if one of the 32 invited tandems withdraws from the tournament.
Söderlund, the ACC Men’s Tennis Player of the Year, earned the Atlantic Coast Conference’s automatic bid into the 64-player tournament and will be the No. 3 seed in the championship. The first-team All-ACC honoree has been ranked as high as No. 3 in singles this season, compiling a 19-4 record in singles, including a 9-1 ledger in league play and 12-4 mark against ranked opponents.
Wiersholm and Nakashima have a 15-3 record in doubles this season, including a 5-1 mark on the top court. They are ranked No. 34 in the latest Oracle ITA doubles rankings.
Virginia men’s tennis players have won four NCAA singles titles. Thai-Son Kwiatkowski was the most-recent champion in 2017, following Ryan Shane (2015) and two-time champion Somdev Devvarman (2007-08). This is the eighth time in program history a Cavalier has been seeded in the top-three of the tournament and is the highest seeding for a UVA player since Alex Domijan was the No. 2 seed and Jarmere Jenkins was the No. 3 seed in 2013.
This will be the first time Söderlund has competed in the NCAA Singles Championship. He earned an at-large bid into last year’s tournament, but withdrew before the start of play. This would be the first appearance for Wiersholm and Nakashima in the NCAA individual championships.
All singles players must have a minimum of 13 started singles matches, with six matches in the spring, in order to be selected as an automatic qualifier or an at-large selection. All doubles teams must have started a minimum of 10 doubles matches, with a minimum of four matches in the spring, in order to be selected as an automatic qualifier or an at-large selection.
Match-ups and the complete singles and doubles brackets will be announced the Sunday before the start of the tournament.