2018 NCAA Division II Women's Tennis Tournament Bracket
NCAA Division II Women's Tennis Tournament Program
They just keep on making history.
The players on Hillsdale College's women's tennis team gathered in the President's VIP Room, located inside Dawn Tibbetts Potter Arena Tuesday night to watch their name get called for an NCAA Tournament selection for the very first time.
The Chargers, 14-4 and Great Midwest Athletic Conference regular season and tournament champions, qualified as the No. 6 seed in the Midwest Region. Hillsdale will face No. 3 seed University of Missouri-St. Louis in a quarterfinal match Saturday at Grand Valley State University.
Match times are not known at this point.
The Midwest Region is broken up into two "micro-tournaments." Four of the seven qualifying teams in the region head to Allendale, Michigan for their matches. In addition to the Hillsdale-UMSL match, the host Lakers will face Wayne State University in that site's other regional quarterfinal. The winners of those two matches will face one another in the regional semifinal Sunday, also at Grand Valley State. The winner of that match will then head to Surprise, Arizona for the Sweet Sixteen next weekend.
In the other half of the Midwest Region bracket, No. 1 seed Drury will face the winner of the University of Indianapolis-Bellarmine regional quarterfinal match.
If the regional quarterfinal match has to be played indoors, it will be played in the Dewitt Tennis Center. Should weather conditions permit the match to be played outdoors, it will be at Grandville Middle School.
One of the biggest wins of the season for Hillsdale came against Wayne State, in a 5-4 thriller in the Biermann Center back in March. That went down as a quality regional win which ended up being a big factor at Hillsdale making it to the postseason. The Chargers occuiped the No. 6 spot in each set of regional rankings released by the NCAA over the past three weeks.
This year's Charger team is deeply talented throughout the lineup. Junior Halle Hyman, the 2015 GLIAC Freshman of the Year and 2017-18 G-MAC Player of the Year, is the team's No. 1 singles player. Hannah Cimpeanu became Hyman's doubles partner and was the G-MAC Freshman of the Year. Katie Bell is an incredibly strong player for the mid-singles flights, while Corinne Prost has seen lots of time at the No. 1 doubles slot.
The team's number 5 and 6 singles players, Kamryn Matthews and Madeline Bissett, have been nearly unbeatable in their flights through the year. The two of them have a total combined record of 56-13 this season and have rarely been challenged this season. The depth they provide has been incredibly important in the team's ability to finish off wins. Matthews won the match-clinching set against Wayne State in that big win by Hillsdale earlier this season.