SWAC East Tournament rolling into City on Friday|[03/22/07]

Published 12:00 am Thursday, March 22, 2007

Tennis fans will be treated to a collegiate level tournament Friday and Saturday when the Southwestern Athletic Conference’s Eastern Division Tournament rolls into town.

Alcorn State University will host the five men’s and women’s tennis teams that make up the SWAC East. Other teams in the event include Alabama A&M, Alabama State, Jackson State and Mississippi Valley State.

ASU tennis coach Tony Dodgen, a former St. Aloysius coach, says the two-day tournament is an important step toward crowning the overall SWAC champion and earning that team an automatic bid to the NCAA Division I Championships.

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&#8220What this tournament does is determine the top three seeds from the east and those teams will get to advance to the SWAC championships in Alexandria, La,” Dodgen said.

With a five-team field in both the men’s and women’s brackets, two teams from each draw will be eliminated from postseason consideration.

One of the teams expected to win the men’s draw is Dodgen’s Braves.

&#8220Our men should be one of the top seeds. It’ll be between us and Jackson State’s men. The last spot will be between Alabama A&M, Valley and Alabama State,” Dodgen said.

&#8220The women’s field is fairly well matched up. Jackson State and Alabama A&M and our girls are at the top,” he said.

ASU’s men are 5-5 coming into the tournament and this includes match wins over Xavier of New Orleans, a team ranked 22nd nationally in NAIA, and Delta State, a team ranked in the top 20 in NCAA Division II.

&#8220Our guys have played a pretty substantial schedule,” Dodgen said. &#8220We played Southern Miss down in Brookhaven and we’ve played Samford and LSU.”

Dodgen, who’s been the coach at Alcorn for the past 10 seasons, has enjoyed plenty of success in tennis.

He built a dynasty at St. Aloysius, leading the Flashes to six consecutive Class 1A championships from 1992 through 1997. The Port Gibson resident has been involved in the game for 27 years.

Because of his ties to the area, Dodgen wanted to bring a high-level tournament to Halls Ferry Park, which is the home court for St. Al, Vicksburg High and Warren Central’s tennis teams.

&#8220This is a good facility and we have the hotels available so I was finally able to bring this event to Vicksburg,” he said.

WC tennis coach Rick Shields is glad Dodgen was able to bring the tournament here.

&#8220I’ve already told my team to be here Friday afternoon so we can watch these players,” Shields said.

Dodgen spent last week promoting the tournament among the local tennis community after sponsoring Tennis in the Park for a second year.

&#8220We saw some promising players, like the Figueroa girls (Catherine, Christine) and Mikhail Cenon,” Dodgen said.

One thing fans will notice is that they are very few American-born tennis players at this level.

Alcorn’s men’s roster is made up of all foreigners, including two from India, a pair of Russians, one from Uzbekistan and the sixth is from the Dominican Republic.

Abhaya Prakash is the Braves’ No. 1 player and he says playing tennis and going to school would be unheard of him in his native India.

&#8220Over there, we’re in school all day. There’s no time to play,” Prakash said.