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Today is Memorial Day, the unofficial beginning of summer. With the college championships wrapping up last week, the 2010-11 season is now at an end.
Today, The Tennis Recruiting Network takes a look at the top women's recruiting classes for next year. TennisRecruiting.net presents its 2011 Spring Recruiting Class Rankings. Media Poll A panel of junior tennis experts has once again volunteered to help us determine the top classes. Journalists, tournament directors, referees, and ranking chairmen from across the country have taken the time to vote on these recruiting classes. The panelists for this list are shown later in the article. Each panelist submitted his/her list of the Top 25 recruiting classes. Schools received 25 points for each first-place vote, 24 points for each second-place vote, on down to 1 point for each 25th-place vote. Because data for transfer students is so hard to come by, we asked the panelists to not consider transfer students in the voting process. Top 25 Women's Recruiting Classes (through May 5) Here are the Spring Rankings of the top women's college recruiting classes, presented by the Tennis Recruiting Network. The Top 25 classes are shown in order, with the point totals and previous ranking from the winter in the two columns at right. The number of first-place votes is shown in parentheses next to the school name. New recruits for schools are shown in bold italics. These lists are based on all commitments reported through May 5, 2011. Also Receiving Votes Other women's programs receiving votes are: Oklahoma (42), Dartmouth (40), Baylor (25), Hawaii (22), TCU (15), Wake Forest (15), Utah (11), Washington & Lee (9), Johns Hopkins (7), Williams (6), Cornell (3), UMass (3), Gonzaga (2), Miami (OH) (1), Ohio State (1). Devils... or Trojans? The top two classes in our rankings are about as good as can be. The Duke Blue Devils and USC Trojans have eight strong recruits between them. How strong? Seven of these young women have been ranked in the Top 10 over the past year, and four of them are currently in the Top 5. In our recruiting class rankings, these two schools also split the 17 first-place votes, with Duke earning 9 to USC's 8. But the edge went to the Blue Devils, who earned 412 out of a possible 425 votes to be named the No. 1 recruiting class. Perhaps the best-known Duke recruit is Beatrice Capra, who knocked off Karolina Sprem and 18th-seeded Aravane Rezai to advance to the third round of the 2010 U.S. Open. Monica Turewicz, Ester Goldfeld, and Annie Mulholland round out the Blue Devil recruiting class. Counting to Five A pair of teams from Los Angeles hold down the second and third spots in our rankings. Southern California - the top team in our Winter Rankings with four Blue Chip recruits - checks in at the No. 2 spot, while the cross-town rival UCLA Bruins are at No. 3. The Michigan Wolverines and Tennessee Volunteers are No. 4 and No. 5, respectively. Welcome Aboard There have been quite a few commitments so far during the spring/summer signing period, and five schools have climbed into our Top 25. The highest-ranked newcomer is Princeton, who earned the No. 16 spot in the recruiting class rankings. The Tigers run their streak of ranked recruiting classes to six - they have appeared in our rankings every year since we started them in 2006. Right behind the Tigers are two more teams that are new to the rankings - the Florida State Seminoles and Ole Miss Rebels, who are ranked No. 17 and 18, respectively. Other ranked teams who were not in our Winter rankings are Columbia (No. 20) and Stephen F. Austin (23). Conference Breakdown The ACC and Big 10 conferences each have five teams in these recruiting class rankings, although the Big 10 has more highly-ranked teams. Big 10 programs in the rankings include Michigan (No. 4), Purdue (8), Indiana (T-10), Illinois (T-10), and Iowa (25). The ACC counters with No. 1 Duke, North Carolina (No. 14), Florida State (17), Virginia (22), and Georgia Tech (24). Other conferences with multiple squads in the rankings are the Ivy League, PAC-12, and SEC - all with four programs apiece. Mid-Major Showings Next Monday, TennisRecruiting.net will publish rankings of mid-major schools - that is, schools outside of the Football BCS conferences and the Ivy League. However, two schools outside that group are in this Top 25 list - No. 19 Pepperdine and No. 23 Stephen F. Austin. The Pepperdine Waves recruiting class consists of a lone recruit - Blue Chip senior Lorraine Guillermo, ranked #10 in the Class of 2011. Guillermo has run up a 62-21 record over the past year with 11 wins over Blue Chip opponents - and she didn't even have to leave the state of California. The SFA Ladyjacks have a slew of strong players coming in next year. Perhaps their most intriguing recruit is Malena Gordo from Argentina. Gordo had reached #34 in the ITF rankings and competed in several junior slams when she took an extended break from tennis due to family matters. Add in Texan Nataly Yoo - who has been as high as #522 in the WTA rankings - and four more international recruits, and you get a Top 25 class. Panelists for May 2011 The 17 panelists for this voting period are shown below alphabetically. As always, we appreciate them donating their time to this ranking effort. Please join us in thanking them.
Up Next... Mid-Major Rankings TennisRecruiting.net will publish the first of its mid-major rankings this coming Friday, June 3rd. Leave a Comment More Recruiting Class Rankings 21-Jun-2024
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What better time than the present to look ahead at recruiting classes for 2011-12? Last week started the process - TennisRecruiting.net ranked the 
