DENTON —The North Texas women's tennis team will compete this weekend in the nation's only women's Intercollegiate Tennis Association Division I Regional Championship this year. 

UNT, who in a normal year plays in the Texas Regional, will head to the Billingsley Tennis Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas, on Friday and aim to win a ITA Central Region title. 

The singles and doubles champion from the regional event will earn an automatic berth to the 2020 ITA National Fall Championships. UNT won the Texas Regional doubles championship in 2018 with then seniors Maria Kononova and Tamuna Kutubidze. This year the Mean Green will send senior Nidhi Surapaneni and newcomers Lucie Devier, Matilde Magrini and Saki Oyama to the Central Regional. 

This will be the fourth year senior Surapaneni has competed in regionals.

"We are thankful for the opportunity to be at the only regionals event being held in the whole country," said head coach Sujay Lama. "We are super excited for our three newcomers to experience their first regional tournament and for our lone senior to have that one last shot at it."]

Beginning on Friday, the Round of 64 singles and Round of 32 doubles tournament begins. Last season Surapaneni reached the quarterfinals of the 2019 ITA Texas Regional singles consolation bracket. For the entire year, she went 7-1 in doubles against Texas Regional opponents. During her Mean Green career, Surapaneni has picked up big victories including wins over Texas and Texas Tech opponents. 

Other schools that compete in the central region include Arkansas, Oklahoma State, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas among many more. 

UNT recently competed at the Big 12 Series 10 days ago. The Mean Green had a fantastic first day where they picked up three singles wins and a doubles victory over some of the top competition in the southwest. A week before that UNT crushed it at the TCU Invite. North Texas had eight victories at the highly competitive TCU Invite with wins over Arkansas, Texas and Baylor opponents.

"The work ethic and culture of this team is impressive," said Lama. "Each of these ladies are working extremely hard every day. They want to do something special this year. This exposure and competition will most definitely be valuable for the spring season."

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