[ColoradoTree]

It's a bit of a bummer that there are no spots left, since consensus #1 recruit (and the #1 junior in the world) Claire Liu has been debating between Stanford, UCLA, and going pro.  I'd dearly love to have both her and Choy, but leaving those pesky NCAA scholarship limitations aside, it sure seems like Liu is going to follow the path of Cici Bellis (another former #1 junior) and go pro immediately.  And really, it would probably be the right call.  Liu won the Wimbledon junior tournament, won the Easter Bowl (a top junior tournament), and made it to the finals of the French Open junior tournament.  The only reason she's not currently the #1 junior in the world is because she stopped playing junior tournaments after winning Wimbledon and instead has been trying her hand at WTA and ITF events.  She qualified for the US Open main draw, and thrashed another top junior who decided to go pro, Caroline Dolehide (who would have been a freshman at UCLA this year), in the process.  She was given a wild card into the Bank of the West Classic at Stanford, and Nicole Gibbs needed a third-set tiebreaker to get past her.  She won two $25K ITF tournaments this summer, and beat our own Carol Zhao in another before falling to Top 100 player Madison Brengle.  Long story short (too late), her trajectory is such that going pro right now is probably the right call for her.  (A brief aside: Liu and Emma Higuchi had some nice battles in juniors through 2016.  Liu took the first two matches in 2014 relatively easily, but the last three have been tough three-setters, with Higuchi taking two of the last three, the most recent being Higuchi's win in the 2016 Easter Bowl. Lesson: Emma Higuchi is one tough out.)  She had rough outings in her last two tournaments, however, so here's hoping that doesn't dissuade her from the pro path and decide to go to UCLA instead!

Now, our recruiting has been outstanding the last several years--the #4 class last year, the #2 class in 2016, the #1 class in 2015, and the #1 class in 2013 (we didn't take anyone in 2014, hence skipping the year), just to go back the last four classes we've taken.  But there isn't a #1 ranked junior anywhere in there.  Even looking at the top recruits that ended up leaving early, Nicole Gibbs peaked at #41 and Carol Zhao peaked at #9.  (Michaela Gordon, for the record, got as high as #21.)  Bottom line: when you're tearing up the junior ranks like Liu is, you tend to go pro right away.  And fyi, with just one player in the class, our recruiting ranking won't be terribly high this year.  But that's kinda meaningless, since we filled the only spot we had with a blue chip. 

As a side note, recruiting rankings aren't always determinative.  I'm reminded that Kimberly Yee was, for a time, the #1 overall recruit in the Class of 2015, and she's had a hard time staying in the lineup, as her developmental arc hasn't followed the same path as her classmates.  (Her lofty recruiting ranking was one reason I was surprised when Arbuthnott and Higuchi both leapfrogged her in the singles lineup last year, and with Gordon laying claim to one of the two open singles spots and Janice Shin being seeded ahead of Yee at the Northwest Regionals, it seems as if she might get leapfrogged again this year.)

[ColoradoTree]

It's a bit of a bummer that there are no spots left, since consensus #1 recruit (and the #1 junior in the world) Claire Liu has been debating between Stanford, UCLA, and going pro.  I'd dearly love to have both her and Choy, but leaving those pesky NCAA scholarship limitations aside, it sure seems like Liu is going to follow the path of Cici Bellis (another former #1 junior) and go pro immediately.  And really, it would probably be the right call.  Liu won the Wimbledon junior tournament, won the Easter Bowl (a top junior tournament), and made it to the finals of the French Open junior tournament.  The only reason she's not currently the #1 junior in the world is because she stopped playing junior tournaments after winning Wimbledon and instead has been trying her hand at WTA and ITF events.  She qualified for the US Open main draw, and thrashed another top junior who decided to go pro, Caroline Dolehide (who would have been a freshman at UCLA this year), in the process.  She was given a wild card into the Bank of the West Classic at Stanford, and Nicole Gibbs needed a third-set tiebreaker to get past her.  She won two $25K ITF tournaments this summer, and beat our own Carol Zhao in another before falling to Top 100 player Madison Brengle.  Long story short (too late), her trajectory is such that going pro right now is probably the right call for her.  (A brief aside: Liu and Emma Higuchi had some nice battles in juniors through 2016.  Liu took the first two matches in 2014 relatively easily, but the last three have been tough three-setters, with Higuchi taking two of the last three, the most recent being Higuchi's win in the 2016 Easter Bowl. Lesson: Emma Higuchi is one tough out.)  She had rough outings in her last two tournaments, however, so here's hoping that doesn't dissuade her from the pro path and decide to go to UCLA instead!

Now, our recruiting has been outstanding the last several years--the #4 class last year, the #2 class in 2016, the #1 class in 2015, and the #1 class in 2013 (we didn't take anyone in 2014, hence skipping the year), just to go back the last four classes we've taken.  But there isn't a #1 ranked junior anywhere in there.  Even looking at the top recruits that ended up leaving early, Nicole Gibbs peaked at #41 and Carol Zhao peaked at #9.  (Michaela Gordon, for the record, got as high as #21.)  Bottom line: when you're tearing up the junior ranks like Liu is, you tend to go pro right away.  And fyi, with just one player in the class, our recruiting ranking won't be terribly high this year.  But that's kinda meaningless, since we filled the only spot we had with a blue chip. 

As a side note, recruiting rankings aren't always determinative.  I'm reminded that Kimberly Yee was, for a time, the #1 overall recruit in the Class of 2015, and she's had a hard time staying in the lineup, as her developmental arc hasn't followed the same path as her classmates.  (Her lofty recruiting ranking was one reason I was surprised when Arbuthnott and Higuchi both leapfrogged her in the singles lineup last year, and with Gordon laying claim to one of the two open singles spots and Janice Shin being seeded ahead of Yee at the Northwest Regionals, it seems as if she might get leapfrogged again this year.)