Quote:Rice women’s tennis coach Elizabeth Schmidt announced on Tuesday that Linda Huang, who won 20 singles matches during her freshman year at the University of Colorado, will join the Owls as a transfer for the 2018-19 season.

Haung was 20-13 overall for the Buffalos and was named the Rookie of the Year for the Mountain region by the ITA (Intercollegiate Tennis Association). The native of Stratfield, NSW, Australia reached the finals of ITA Mountain Regional Championship in singles and concluded the fall tournament schedule with an 11-3 record and a No. 54 national ranking.

She posted a 9-10 record in spring dual action, including an 8-10 while playing at the first singles line. She played first singles when Rice defeated Colorado 4-3 on March 13, dropping a three-set match to graduating senior Lindsey Hodge.

Huang will join incoming freshmen Anastasia and Victoria Smirnova as new additions to the Rice roster for the 2018-19 season.

http://www.riceowls.com/sports/w-tennis/...18aaa.html

Nice! To add the #1 player for a PAC-12 team is an addition I’ll take any day.

Against ranked teams, she was only 1-10 in singles matches. And combined, in those matches, she won 5 sets and lost 21.

She was also a freshman. Took our number one to 3 sets.

(05-22-2018 01:42 PM)WRCisforgotten79 Wrote:  Against ranked teams, she was only 1-10 in singles matches. And combined, in those matches, she won 5 sets and lost 21.

Ok?

And, next year's women's roster will have just 1 American of the 8 on the team.

I’d rather be foreign and win than domestic and lose.

I'll trust Schmidt.

(05-22-2018 02:14 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  I’d rather be foreign and win than domestic and lose.

My comment was in reference to a post on an earlier thread (NCAA regionals) that remarked about how many foreigners played for the other 3 schools in that regional. These recent moves point out that Rice (unfortunately) is no different.

(05-22-2018 02:31 PM)WRCisforgotten79 Wrote:  

(05-22-2018 02:14 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  I’d rather be foreign and win than domestic and lose.

My comment was in reference to a post on an earlier thread (NCAA regionals) that remarked about how many foreigners played for the other 3 schools in that regional. These recent moves point out that Rice (unfortunately) is no different.

Why is it unfortunate?

(05-22-2018 02:14 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  I’d rather be foreign and win than domestic and lose.

Kinda like drinking beer

(05-22-2018 03:12 PM)HawaiiOwl Wrote:  

(05-22-2018 02:14 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  I’d rather be foreign and win than domestic and lose.

Kinda like drinking beer

Yeah - maybe in the 50th state, there are not all of the excellent local breweries that we have here in Texas. That nonsense about the superiority of foreign beers no longer applies.

https://www.hawaiimagazine.com/content/5...ries-visit

Awesome! I'll assume Anastasia and Victoria Smirnova are twins. I see they are from Belgium (at least they are currently in Belgium).

(05-22-2018 04:12 PM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  I'll assume Anastasia and Victoria Smirnova are twins. I see they are from Belgium (at least they are currently in Belgium).

Yep.

Nov. 10, 2017, Rice news release Wrote:Rice women’s tennis coach Elizabeth Schmidt announced the signing of twin sisters Anastasia and Victoria Smirnova to letters of intent to join the Owls for the 2018-19 season.

(05-22-2018 02:06 PM)WRCisforgotten79 Wrote:  And, next year's women's roster will have just 1 American of the 8 on the team.

OldOwl, is that you?

(05-22-2018 02:20 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  I'll trust Schmidt.

Word!

(05-22-2018 05:15 PM)mrbig Wrote:  

(05-22-2018 02:06 PM)WRCisforgotten79 Wrote:  And, next year's women's roster will have just 1 American of the 8 on the team.

OldOwl, is that you?

It's probably not even true anyway as according to her bio, Michaela Haet was born in Connecticut.

(05-22-2018 06:58 PM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  

(05-22-2018 05:15 PM)mrbig Wrote:  

(05-22-2018 02:06 PM)WRCisforgotten79 Wrote:  And, next year's women's roster will have just 1 American of the 8 on the team.

OldOwl, is that you?

It's probably not even true anyway as according to her bio, Michaela Haet was born in Connecticut.

But hometown listed as Sydney, Australia, and she was a junior player in the Australian system.

I have nothing against international athletes - in fact, I think it is good to have them as students. But, I prefer balance, and 87.5% of the team being non-American is hardly balance.

I don't have a problem with Rice doing what it needs to do to keep up with the competition, but I do think NCAA tennis has a problem when the overwhelming majority of players on all teams are foreign. I mean, I guess the primary problem lies with the USTA for the fact that American kids have fallen so far behind the rest of the world. They just flat out aren't good enough to merit more than the relative handful of scholarships at the D-I level than they're getting. So no, I don't favor Rice unilaterally disarming and taking inferior players just to have Americans on the team. But, you do have to wonder how long college tennis can go on like this, especially at cash-strapped public schools where taxpayers are funding scholarships that are essentially going exclusively to non-American kids.