Women’s Tennis: Emma Navarro earns No. 1 seed in NCAA Singles Championship

Courtesy UVA Media Relations

Virginia women’s tennis sophomore Emma Navarro (Charleston, S.C.) will be the No. 1 seed at the 2022 NCAA Women’s Tennis Singles Championship, being held May 23-28 at the Khan Outdoor Tennis Complex in Champaign, Illinois, after the conclusion of the team championship, which runs from May 20-22. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will serve as host.

Navarro and fellow sophomore Hibah Shaikh (Teaneck, N.J.) earned the No. 3 seed in the 2022 NCAA Women’s Doubles Championship which will be held at that same time.

Junior Natasha Subhash (Fairfax, Va.) has also earned an invitation to compete in the singles championship. Freshman Elaine Chervinsky (Baltimore, Md.) is among the alternates for the tournament.

Navarro headed into the postseason as the No. 1 ranked player in the ITA singles rankings with a 21-1 record. The 2021 NCAA Singles champion earned the ACC’s automatic bid into the championship. Texas’ Peyton Stearns is the No. 2 seed. Daria Frayman of Princeton, who will be playing this weekend with her team in the Charlottesville regional, is the No. 4 seed. North Carolina’s Cameron Morra is the five-seed.

Navarro is the first player in program history to earn the No. 1 seed in the Championship. Danielle Collins was the No. 2 seed in 2016 when she won her second title. Navarro was the three-seed last year.

Navarro and Shaikh are the first players in program history to earn a seeding in the doubles championship. The duo have 10 victories on the No. 1 court this season, including two wins against teams ranked in the top-five. Shaikh and Navarro won 7-5 against the ITA’s then-ranked No. 1 doubles team of Elizabeth Scotty and Fiona Crawley of UNC to clinch the doubles point in UVA’s upset of the No. 1 Tar Heels in the ACC Championship semifinals. Scotty and Crawley are the No. 2 seed in the draw while Jaeda Daniel and Nell Miller of NC State earned the No. 1 seed, giving the ACC the top three seeds in the championship.

This will be Subhash’s second time competing in the NCAA Singles Championship. The two-time singles All-American was a 9-16 seed last season, falling in the Round of 32.

Chervinsky is ranked ninth on the alternate list. She is eligible to play in the championship if enough currently invited players withdraw from the competition.

Match-ups and the complete singles and doubles brackets will be announced the day before the start of the tournament.

Automatic qualification into the Division I singles championship is awarded to any conference with one or more eligible singles players ranked in the ITA Top 125 for eligible/entered singles players. For conferences with more than one singles player within the ITA Top 125 eligible/entered singles players, the subcommittee applies the NCAA selection criteria to determine which student-athlete is the automatic qualifier from those conferences. All singles players must have a minimum of 13 started singles matches, with six matches in the spring, in order to be selected as an automatic qualifier or an at-large selection.

Automatic qualification into the Division I doubles championship is awarded to any conference with one or more eligible doubles teams ranked in the ITA Top 60 for eligible/entered doubles teams. For conferences with more than one doubles team within the ITA Top 60 eligible/entered doubles teams, the subcommittee applies the NCAA selection criteria to determine which doubles team is the automatic qualifier from those conferences. All doubles teams must have started a minimum of 10 doubles matches, with a minimum of four matches in the spring, in order to be selected as an automatic qualifier or an at-large selection.