XU Gold Rush reload with five signees for 2013-14 season

Tushar Mandlekar

Vincenzo Ciccone

NEW ORLEANS — Coach Alan Green on Friday announced Xavier University of Louisiana's five-member men's tennis recruiting class. It's the largest recruiting class in Green's 11 seasons with the Gold Rush.
    
Newcomers signed to scholarships for the 2013-14 academic year were:
     •  Adam Albrecht of Ladna, Czech Republic, and Gymnasium Breclav.
     •  Kevin Chaouat of Sarcelles, France, a transfer from Embry-Riddle (Fla.) and home-schooled before college.
     •  Vincenzo Ciccone of Brooklyn, N.Y., Aspirations High School and ASA College.
     •  Jordan Harrell of Lithonia, Ga., and Martin Luther King Jr. High School.
     •  Tushar Mandlekar of Bhilai, India, and Deepak Nagar Government High Secondary School.
    
All five are right-handers. Ciccone is a junior at Xavier, and Chaouat is a sophomore. Albrecht, Harrell and Mandlekar are freshmen.
    
Albrecht ranked 70th in singles among juniors in the Czech Republic in 2012. He has won seven singles tournaments and 10 doubles tournaments in his career.     

Kevin Chaouat

Jordan Harrell

Chaouat won four regional tournament titles and has advanced to the semifinals of the French junior championships. He helped Embry-Riddle win its first NAIA national championship this past season; for the year he was 4-3 in singles, 22-5 in doubles and won 17 in a row with Simon Felix — including an 8-2 decision against XU's Nikita Soifer and Viktor Svoboda which was the only loss in Soifer and Svoboda's final 16 matches.
    
Ciccone was the 2012 American Tennis Association men's singles champion. That's the same tournament that legendary Xavier player Jimmie McDaniel won four times. At ASA, Ciccone helped the Avengers achieve their first national ranking and an 11th-place finish in 2012 at the NJCAA national tournament. He was NJCAA Academic All-Region XV as a sophomore.
    

Adam Albrecht

Harrell is a Tennisrecruiting.net 4-star prospect ranked 17th in Georgia and 78th in the Southeast. Harrell won USTA singles events in 2012 and 2013, and he has competed in the World Team Tennis Junior Nationals. The USTA website credits Harrell with a 555-165 record during the past 10 years. Harrell was 24-1 at No. 1 singles over his final two prep seasons at MLK.
    
Mandlekar's career includes championships in six singles tournaments and three doubles tournaments in international competition. Mandlekar's highest International Tennis Federation ranking was 683rd in 2012. Also that year he was 25th in India's boys 18 rankings.
    
Chaouat and Mandlekar are business management majors at Xavier. Ciccone and Harrell are majoring in mass communications, and Albrecht is majoring in art.
    
Xavier's Gold Rush ranked fifth in the 2013 NAIA Postseason Coaches' Top 25 Poll. It was the XU men's highest-ever ranking and their third consecutive top-10 appearance in the season's final poll. The Gold Rush in 2013 became the first XU program to reach the quarterfinals of an NAIA National Championship in consecutive seasons. The Gold Rush have qualified for nationals each of the last five seasons.

By Ed Cassiere, Sports Information Director
XULAATHLETICS
XAVIER UNIVERSITY OF LOUISIANA