CEDAR RAPIDS Iowa-- The Wartburg women's tennis team (6-7 overall) competes in the Iowa Conference Team Championships this weekend. Friday night's first-round matches will be held at Hawkeye Tennis & Recreation Complex in Iowa City and Clark Racquet Center in Cedar Rapids. On Saturday, the scene shifts to Veterans Memorial Tennis Center in Cedar Rapids for semifinal and placement matches.
Coe College enters the weekend with a perfect 11-0 mark, including 8-0 in league play. Two-time defending champion Luther College is seeded second after going 10-3 overall and 7-1 in the IIAC during the fall. The Kohawks earned the No. 1 by virtue of a 5-4 victory September 18 in Decorah. Cornell College sits third at 12-3 overall and 6-2 in the IIAC, while Wartburg College (7-6, 5-3 IIAC), Central College (6-7, 4-4 IIAC), and Simpson College (7-6, 3-5 IIAC) round out the field for this weekend's tournament. Buena Vista University (5-8, 2-6 IIAC), University of Dubuque (3-12, 1-7 IIAC), and Loras College (1-13, 0-8 IIAC) round out the IIAC standings.
The first-round match between Cornell and Simpson will take place at Hawkeye Tennis & Recreation Complex in Iowa City, while the match pitting Wartburg against Central will be contested at Clark Racquet Center on the campus of Coe College in Cedar Rapids. Both duals begin at 6 p.m. Friday evening.
Coe and Luther await the victors in semifinal matches scheduled for 9 a.m. Saturday. The fifth-place match will begin immediately once one of the semifinal matches concludes with third-place and championship matches to follow at approximately 12:30 p.m.
The dual matches will start with doubles and conclude once a team wins five points and are played out to determine place finishes one through six. The top four teams from this weekend will advance to next April's Iowa Conference NCAA Automatic Qualifier Tournament to determine the recipient of the league's automatic berth in the 2012 NCAA Division III Women's Tennis Championship field.
Follow the 2011 Iowa Conference Women’s Tennis Championships at: http://www.iowaconference.com/sports/2011/9/27/WTEN_2011IIACChampionship.aspx
All nine Conference schools will participate in next weekend's Individual Tournament to be held at the Veterans Memorial Tennis Center and at Coe College. The brackets and preview for the Individual Championship will be released on the Iowa Conference web site (www.iowaconference.com) next week.
