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Cal's recruiting class (left to right): Ben Draper, Jack Molloy, Jackson Suh, Jacob Brumm and Paul Barretto. (Not pictured: Thomas Wright).
MTEN5/22/2017 3:19 PM | By: Cal Athletics
Men’s Tennis Recruits Named Top Class Of 2017
BERKELEY – The incoming California men's tennis freshman class earned another accolade as the No. 1 recruiting class for the 2016-17 season, the Tennis Recruiting Network announced Monday. The college tennis recruiting site, also known as TennisRecruiting.net, previously named Cal's signees as the top recruiting class in its winter rankings.
Head coach
Peter Wright and associate head coach
Tyler Browne signed a six-man class of Jacob Brumm, Paul Barretto, Jackson Suh, Ben Draper, Jack Molloy and Thomas Wright, the son of
Peter Wright. The class has another Cal family connection, as Paul Barretto is the younger brother of current freshman
Dominic Barretto.
Cal earned 532 points and first place in the Tennis Recruiting Network Top 25 rankings, which included all signees reported as of April 30. Second-place Florida collected 497 points and third-place UCLA garnered 494 points.
"We're obviously thrilled to receive recognition for having the top recruiting class in the country," Cal head coach
Peter Wright said. "The credit goes to the fine young men who committed to play for Cal next year, to our great recruiter associate head coach
Tyler Browne, and to our incredibly generous Cal tennis family, which helped us complete the recent upgrade of our tennis facilities. We've set the bar high for our program, and our newest team members embrace the challenge to be the best tennis players and students they can be."
The talented class features the nation's seventh-ranked recruit in Brumm, the 17th-ranked recruit in Barretto, the state of Washington's third-ranked player in Suh and two of the top juniors in England in Draper and Molloy, who hail from the same school (Reed's School) that produced British great Tim Henman. The newest Golden Bears will join the program in the fall of 2017.
Cal will lose three seniors from the current team in
Filip Bergevi,
Andre Goransson and
Florian Lakat. The three will complete their college careers in the NCAA individual championships that end May 29 in Athens, Georgia.
The trio helped the 2016-17 team post a 20-8 record, take second place in the Pac-12 Conference and reach the NCAA round of 16 in Athens. The three also were major contributors on the 2015-16 squad that reached the NCAA semifinals for the first time in 25 years. In the fall of this season, Bergevi and Lakat won the doubles title in the Saint Francis Health System All-American Championships, and Goransson won the singles title in the ITA Norwest Regional Championships.
The 12th-ranked Lakat and 61st-ranked Goransson will compete in the NCAA Singles Championship that starts Wednesday, while the fifth-ranked duo of Bergevi and Lakat will play in the NCAA Doubles Championship that starts Thursday. As a seeded team in NCAA doubles, Bergevi and Lakat earned doubles All-America honors for the second straight season, and Lakat claimed his first singles All-America honor as a seed in NCAA singles in Athens.