Virginia senior Julia Elbaba punched her ticket to November’s ITA National Indoors Championship Monday at Liberty University’s Cook Tennis Center, steamrolling Virginia Tech sophomore Caroline Daxhelet in the ITA Atlantic Regional singles final.
Senior Danielle Collins and freshman Meghan Kelley also advanced to the fall season’s capstone tournament — in doubles — when they topped teammates Elbaba and senior Skylar Morton in a straight-sets championship.
The tournament’s top seed, Elbaba, won five matches in three days to advance to Monday’s final. She faced her stiffest challenge Friday, when George Washington sophomore Teodora Radosavljevic pushed her to three tight sets in the first round of main-draw action. The Oyster Bay, New York native upped her game thereafter, dropping no more than four games in a single match the rest of the tournament.
Collins — who did not compete in singles because she’d already advanced to the National Indoors with her title at the Riviera/ITA All-American earlier this month — added to her dominant fall season with five wins alongside Kelley in doubles play. The pairing held the main draw’s second seed but ceded only four games against top-seeded Elbaba and Morton in Monday’s championship.
Virginia next competes as a team Nov. 6-8 at the UNC Fall Invite in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.