The Lady Vols tennis team has reached its third consecutive round of 16 after winning two matches at home and will now face Virginia on the road in the 2025 Women’s NCAA Championship.

No. 10 Tennessee defeated Elon and No. 26 Pepperdine last weekend in Knoxville to stay in the postseason bracket. The Gentlemen Vols also defended home court last weekend with wins over Alabama State and No. 17 Duke.

“Playing at home on Rocky Top makes a huge difference,” head coach Alison Ojeda said. “Having home court advantage with the Tennessee men’s tennis team here was fantastic. The girls compete their tails off all the time, but in front of our own crowd makes a difference.”

The Super Regional match against No. 7 Virginia will be today, May 9, at 4 p.m. at the Virginia Tennis Complex in Charlottesville. The programs played earlier this season with Virginia taking a 4-2 win at the ITA Indoor National Championships in Evanston, Illinois, on Feb. 7.

A year ago, the Lady Vols made it to Final Four – the second in program history – with Ojeda due to give birth in a few weeks. Ojeda was part of the Tennessee team as a player that made the first Final Four in 2002. The former Lady Vol and her wife, Erin, welcomed son Marcus, who will turn 1 on July 1. The couple also have a 3-year-old daughter named Summitt, who is named after the legendary Pat Summitt.

BASKETBALL

Coach Kim Caldwell is officially on maternal leave – though she anticipated going into the office once a week – after giving birth to son Conor on Jan. 20 with husband Justin Caldwell and then returning to practice three days later.

Caldwell handled the new graduates signing the graduation pole in the Lady Vols locker room and the three Big Orange Caravan stops in Memphis, Nashville and Tri-Cities and then started a leave of absence for a few weeks.

While this week is a recruiting shutdown – that means no contact of any kind with a recruit, not even liking a post on social media – the restrictions lift at 12:01 a.m. on Monday, May 12.

“I will still be on the phone some,” Caldwell said. “But I will be around my son, and I’m looking forward to starting a routine with him. We’ll travel a little bit and try to get our feet under us and then get back to it.

“I will probably still go in once a week. I’m going to try not to, and I will probably still take him when I go in, but so much now, you’re just taking calls, you’re connecting with people, and so I would probably go in a little bit. I’ve tried to tell myself I’m not going to, but I also know who I am.”

SOFTBALL

The softball team earned a No. 4 seed and a double bye in the SEC tourney and ended up playing one game with Thursday’s 6-1 loss to Arkansas in a matchup that unraveled in the seventh inning. All six runs were unearned and were the result of two errors.

Perhaps the softball team can take a page out of the basketball team’s playbook. The Lady Vols had a disappointing end to the regular season and an early exit from the SEC tourney before finding success in NCAA tourney play to reach the Sweet 16.

The Lady Vols softball team circles up before an SEC tourney game. (Tennessee Athletics)

“The only silver lining when you don’t win down here – again we come down here win – you get a little bit more rest,” coach Karen Weekly said. “It will be a good chance to rest the body, really rest the minds, too. We just talked about that in our circle. The SEC can take a toll on you mentally.

“The self-talk has to be there to keep yourself in a good head space and to be able to see through the losses the good things you’re doing and how you’re putting yourself in a good position for postseason.”

The post-game press conference with Weekly and pitcher Karlyn Pickens can be watched HERE.

GOLF

The golf team has reached the NCAA Championships for the first time since 2019 after placing fourth in the NCAA Lubbock Regional at The Rawls Course in Texas earlier this week.

“I am incredibly proud of this team,” said head coach Diana Cantú, a former Lady Vols golfer who took the helm of the program in 2021. “They worked so hard to get to this point. We had a lot of up and downs this season, but they just owned their strengths, focused on the good things and played free and went out there and took it.”

The Lady Vols climbed three spots up the leaderboard in round three to claim fourth place. The third-round score of 7-under tied for the second-best 18-hole score on day three.

“I couldn’t ask for a better way of ending this tournament,” Cantú said. “They just stayed so strong. It was really incredible to watch. I am very happy for them. They came together as a team in an amazing way. They played for each other, and they believed in themselves.”

Next up for Tennessee is a trip to Carlsbad, California for the championship rounds, which run from May 16-21 at the Omni La Costa Resort & Spa. It will be the 15th time in program history that the Lady Vols have reached the NCAA Championships.

Maria M. Cornelius, a senior writer/editor at MoxCar Marketing + Communications since 2013, started her journalism career at the Knoxville News Sentinel and began writing about the Lady Vols in 1998. In 2016, she published her first book, “The Final Season: The Perseverance of Pat Summitt,” through The University of Tennessee Press.