“I am very proud of Ash, she has worked extremely hard these last two years to put herself in this position as one of the best players in the nation in Division-I tennis,” NM State head coach Ivan Fernandez said. “She has shown that she can compete with the top players in the country and has earned this ranking with her results in the fall semester. She is our No. 1 singles’ player and will help lead the team this spring.”
The ITA also released its regional rankings this week. Shrivastava is ranked as the third-best singles’ player in the Mountain Region behind only McKenzie Davis of Utah State and Tereza Bekerova of Utah. She is also tied for No. 5 in the Mountain Region in the doubles’ rankings along with partner and fellow India native Rimpledeep Kaur.
Shrivastava’s two WAC Athlete of the Month awards came for the months of September and October, the only two months in the fall that she actually competed in.
“It’s a great feeling to be ranked amongst the top players in the country,” Shrivastava said. “I want to thank my coaches and my teammates for all their support. This just motivates me to work even harder and produce better results for my team this spring.”
Shrivastava, who only began playing on the Aggie squad last season as a sophomore, began the season by going undefeated in NM State’s home tournament, the Aggie Invitational.
She was then invited to participate in one of the most prestigious tournaments on the national tennis schedule, the Riviera/ITA All-American Championships in California, where she faced off against some of the best tennis players in the nation.
Shrivastava began the tournament in the pre-qualifying round where she proceeded to go 3-0 to advance to the qualifying round. She defeated the likes of Jessica Wacnik, the No. 1 player from Boston College, and Kentucky’s Kelsey Dieters who at the time was the 105th-ranked player in the country.
Shrivastava won all three matches in straight sets to become the first NM State player in program history to advance out of the prequalifying round at the All-American.
She would go on to lose her first match of the qualifying round to Erin Routliffe of Alabama, who at the time was the 45th-ranked player in the country and currently sits as the 25th-best player. Shrivastava went up in the match after winning the first set, 6-2, but Routliffe would take the final two sets, including a heavily contested final set, 6-4.
After having the best performance by an Aggie tennis player in program history at the All-American Championships, Shrivastava earned a No. 4 seed at the 128-player Mountain Regional Tournament in Albuquerque.
She earned a first-round bye and then proceeded to win four-straight matches, all in straight sets, to advance to the semifinal round, where she finally lost to Bekerova, the 76th-ranked player in the country and No. 1 seed in the tournament. She became the first player in NM State history to advance to the semifinal round of a regional tournament.
Shrivastava also advanced to the quarterfinal round of the Mountain Regional in doubles’ play alongside Kaur. The 12th-seeded Aggie duo also received a first-round bye and then won two matches before falling to the fourth-ranked team in the tournament, Utah’s Bekerova and Lucia Kovarcikova.
Shrivastava and the rest of the Aggie team begin their spring schedule on Saturday, Jan. 24, with a trip to Tucson, Ariz., to meet the University of Arizona. Local NM State tennis fans will have their first chance to check out the team the following week as the Aggies begin their home spring schedule with matchups versus SUNY-Buffalo on Friday, Jan. 30, and Texas State on Sunday, Feb. 1, at the NM State Tennis Center.