TCU men, Texas A&M women win first NCAA Division I tennis titles

A pair of historic firsts for Texas Christian University and Texas A&M capped off the NCAA Division I Tennis Championships team events on Sunday. Competing in Stillwater, Okla., on the Oklahoma State University campus, the fourth seed TCU men and the 13th seed A&M women each won the NCAA title for the first time.

The TCU Horned Frogs completed a revenge tour by avenging recent big-stage defeats to Kentucky, Ohio State and Texas on the way to the crown. Their dramatic 4-3 final win against 2019 champions Texas flipped a pair of shutout losses to the Longhorns in the final year of Big 12 play.

After a 5-2 quarterfinal victory against Kentucky and a 4-2 semifinal decision over Ohio State, TCU rallied from 3-2 down in the championship round. Behind by a set and a break on the No. 1 court, sophomore Jack Pinnington beat Texas star Elliot Spizzirri, 2-6, 6-4, 6-2, to level the match and leave the No. 5 singles spot to determine the national champ.

In an all-American battle between TCU's Sebastian Gorzny and Texas' Jonah Braswell, Austin native Gorzny used three consecutive breaks of serve to get over the line with a 7-5, 4-6, 6-3 victory that made history for the Horned Frogs.

Head coach David Roditi, a former TCU player who has led the program since 2010, guided the team to ITA Indoor Nationals titles in 2022 and 2023 and now adds an NCAA crown to the trophy case. A perennial contender for national honors, the Horned Frogs will end the season as the ITA's No. 1 team for the first time. That marks the 10th straight year the team has finished in the Top 10, a feat no other program has accomplished.

ITA No. 1 Mary Stoiana, a junior from Southbury, Conn., led the way for the Aggies with a No. 1 singles win against Dasha Vidmanova, while Israel's Nicole Khirin clinched the trophy with a victory at No. 3. American Carson Branstine (Orange, Calif.) was one game away from a win at the No. 2 position when the overall match was decided.

Stoiana was named tournament MVP and joined Branstine, Khirin and No. 5 singles player Lucciana Perez on the all-tournament team. The Aggies also swept the all-tournament honors in doubles with each of their three teams.

The Aggies previously reached the NCAA title match in 2013, when current head coach Mark Weaver was an assistant, but they had not been back to the final since a defeat to Stanford that season. Weaver, a former Aggie men's player, was named head coach in 2015. The Briton has been with the women's program for 25 years since starting as a volunteer assistant in 1999.