Exeter Tennis Centre to host BUCS Qualifiers

The University of Exeter is one of three institutions, including Warwick and Leeds Universities, selected to host the national qualifiers which will see over three hundred student tennis players take to the court across three days of intense competition. The event is the preliminary qualifying round for the BUCS individual Championships taking place in February at the Gosling Centre in Hertfordshire.

The competition is set to be fierce. Approximately 275 men and 100 women from across Britain are expected to take part in the three qualifying events, with only twelve from each gender group qualifying for the finals. The draw will be on a straight knockout basis with players competing as individuals in best of three tie-break sets, singles matches.

Director of tennis Will McNally commented “We are really looking forward to hosting this event. We won the bid due to our superb facilities and we relish the challenge of hosting a large competition. This is an excellent opportunity for University of Exeter students to excel on a national level. The standard is set to be incredibly high and we are looking forward to watching some fantastic tennis. Exeter has high hopes of a successful competition with sixteen men and ten women entered into the draw. We will be training hard and looking to capitalise on the home advantage!”

The successful competitors who qualify through will join the top twenty seeds in the Individual Championships Final. The twenty top seeds in university tennis automatically qualify for the final event and include three University of Exeter players; Burnham Arlidge (Archaeology and Anthropology, 1st year), Yvanna Kurlak (History, 3rd year) and Anastasia Nebojanko (Philosophy and Political Economics, 3rd year).

In the final players will accrue points for the British University and Colleges sport rankings. The University of Exeter is enjoying a successful season in the league, currently lying in fifth in the overall table, and second in the overall tennis table.