Wisconsin's Burke, Notre Dame's
Langenkamp capture singles titles at ITA National Summer Championships;
earn wild cards into first national tournaments of 2005-06 collegiate
season
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - Wisconsin's Caitlin Burke and Notre Dame's Eric
Langenkamp captured the singles titles Tuesday at the Intercollegiate
Tennis Association (ITA) National Summer Championships at the Indiana
University Varsity Tennis Center.
Last night Ohio State's Drew Eberly and
Chris Klingemann and host Indiana's Sarah Batty and Laura McGaffigan
captured the men's and women's doubles titles, respectively.
The ITA National Summer Championships,
presented by the United States Tennis Association (USTA), are the
pinnacle of the ITA Collegiate Summer Circuit, which was played at 23
regional sites throughout the country last month. The singles and
doubles champions from this week's championships earned wild cards into
the first national tournaments of the 2005-06 collegiate tennis season -
the Polo Ralph Lauren Men's All-American Championships in Tulsa, Okla.,
and Riviera/ITA Women's All-American Championships in Pacific Palisades,
Calif., October 6-9 (the finalists earned wild cards into the qualifying
tournaments).
Fourth-seeded Burke, a junior from Cedarburg,
Wis., came from behind to edge second-seeded Anna Lubinsky of Texas A&M,
2-6, 6-4, 1-0 (10-7). Burke is the fifth straight women's player from a
Big Ten school to capture the summer title and the first Badger since 1996
champ Melissa Zimpfer. She won five matches in four days en route to the
title. Prior to UW, Burke was a four-time state high school champion at
Cedarburg H.S. A 10-point match tie-breaker was played in place of a third
set for this tournament.
"I was just able to win most of the big points down the stretch," Burke
said. "And those big points make the difference in a close match."
Notre Dame's Langenkamp, a senior from Scarsdale,
N.Y., rolled to a 6-3, 6-1 victory over Miami's (Fla.) Eric Hechtman.
Langenkamp, a No. 9-16 seed and the first Notre Dame player to reach the
ITA final, won six matches in four days to claim the title. Four of his
wins were over players seeded in the top eight, including No. 1 Paul Rose
of Purdue in the quarterfinals.