Juco standout Huggins joins XU Gold Rush for spring season

COREY HUGGINS
 MEN'S TENNIS TEAM
XAVIER UNIVERSITY OF LOUISIANA

NEW ORLEANS — Corey Huggins, a standout the past two seasons for Seminole State College of Seminole, Okla., has signed a men's tennis scholarship with Xavier University of Louisiana.

Huggins, a 6-foot-2, 182-pound right-hander from Brooklyn, N.Y., is an XU junior majoring in marketing and eligible for the 2012 spring season, which the Gold Rush will begin at 2 p.m. Saturday at Tulane.

Huggins was a semifinalist at No. 5 singles at the 2011 NJCAA Division I National Tournament and, for the second consecutive year, helped the Trojans finish fifth in the team standings. This past season he recorded a doubles victory against Baylor, ranked 13th in NCAA Division I, and a singles victory against Cameron, ranked 19th in NCAA Division II. As a freshman Huggins was a regional runner-up in doubles during the fall and finished fifth in the NJCAA division of the USTA/ITA National Small College Championships.

Huggins was 19-6 in singles as a Seminole sophomore. He was 14-5 in singles and 18-6 in doubles as a freshman. In the final Intercollegiate Tennis Association NJCAA rankings, Huggins was 84th in singles and 18th in doubles as a sophomore and 47th in singles and 19th in doubles as a freshman.

"Corey is a strong doubles player and has a really big forehand," Seminole coach Brian Nelson said. "He's solid at the net with his volleying. He's a mature tennis player. He doesn't get rattled and doesn't get nervous, probably because of all the juniors experience he has."

Huggins is a native of Kingstown, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and moved to the United States from that Caribbean country in 2004. He graduated from Brooklyn's Bedford Stuyvesant Preparatory High School but did not compete in sports there. TennisRecruiting.net rated him as a four-star recruit.

Huggins is one of four newcomers — the others are Loic Didavi, Nikita Soifer and Viktor Svoboda — on the Gold Rush roster.

NOTES: XU coach Alan Green said fifth-year student Ashley McGill has rejoined the women's roster for 2012. McGill, who played tennis the past two seasons and basketball the past four seasons for the Gold Nuggets, is from Memphis, Tenn., and a graduate of Northside High School. The Gold Nuggets' first match will start at 9 a.m. Sunday at Tulane.

By Ed Cassiere, Sports Information Director

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