This week the USC women’s tennis team will look to build on their momentum as they split up, sending four Trojans to the Intercollegiate Tennis Association Fall Championships (San Diego, Calif.) Nov. 1-5 and the rest to the Thunderbird Invite (Tempe, Ariz.) Nov. 3-5.

“It’s a big opportunity and accomplishment,” said sophomore Emma Charney in an interview with the Daily Trojan. “We’re all super excited to go compete with some of the best players in the country.” 

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Charney recently secured a Singles automatic bid with her ITA Southwest Regional victory last week, beating the one, two and four seeds in the region. In a match that went to three sets, Charney came out on top. 

“Honestly, the mentality I had in the finals was that this was an awesome opportunity …  so in the third set after I had lost the second, I just took a second to chill … I knew I was tougher,” Charney said.

Charney also joins graduate student Eryn Cayetano in the doubles wild card slot, alongside doubles partners junior Parker Fry and junior Grace Piper. 

“Grace and Emma stand out as two players who have made a big jump and shown that in their fall competition results,” said Head Coach Alison Swain. “Fry has been a great addition … she’s a transfer for us and she’s had a lot of firsts in her tennis career since starting at USC getting a chance to play and qualify for these big events.” 

The two doubles teams will compete in a format different from tournaments in the spring. Instead of playing one match to six, the Trojans will compete in two sets with a match breaker. 

“The benefit that Emma and Eryn have is they played All-Americans and the format is the same, so they’ve actually played more matches together under a two-set format and doubles than the single-set that’s typical. So that’s an advantage for them for sure,” Swain said.

The team awaits the draw, where they will learn who they play first. The players discussed how they were preparing for their opponent.  

“Some players love to stalk the whole draw and search up their opponent,” Charney said. “I just don’t like to know because I don’t want to stress or think about it.” 

“Everybody’s different. You see a lot of the same players and you hear the same names and this is a big tournament and going into it you don’t want to overthink who you’re playing or build them up in your mind,”  Swain said.

This season, Charney aims to be the second Trojan in recent years to win the ITA singles title with her doubles partner Cayetano winning in 2021. 

The remainder of the Trojan squad looks to top last year’s nine wins across singles and doubles at the Thunderbird Invitational. Junior Snow Han and redshirt junior McKenna Koenig make their first appearances at the event while senior Naomi Cheong, junior Sloane Morra and redshirt junior Isabelle Lee will all make their returns to the tournament.