Mother's Day Sunday will be a special one for the Clark Atlanta University Lady Panthers tennis team as they will be boarding a flight to head to south Florida in preparation for their May 13 match against Nova Southeastern University in the preliminary round of the NCAA Division II Women's Tennis Tournament.

"We're very excited," said Lady Panthers head coach Tara Turner. "We are looking forward to the experience so that we can match up against teams that we are looking to start playing against during the regular season."

The NCAA announced the 48-team women's pairings for the tournament on its Selection Show Monday night.

The Lady Panthers (16-3, 14-0 SIAC) claimed the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference's automatic bid when they won the conference tournament three weeks ago in Peachtree City, Ga. when they defeated Benedict College and Tuskegee University.

It's the Lady Panthers' first SIAC title and NCAA appearance since 2011.  CAU fell to fourth-ranked Barry University 5-0 in that NCAA regional tourney.

This year, the Lady Panthers go into the tournament seeded seventh and will face a Nova Southeastern team that is the second seed.  The Sharks went 21-4 this season, losing the Sunshine State Conference championship match to Lynn.  Lynn, seeded third in the NCAA regional, is 22-0 this season and takes on No. 6 seed West Florida (20-8) on May 13.  The winner of the two matches play each other on May 14 for a berth in the NCAA Division II Tennis Championships May 22-25.

"My girls have worked hard," said Turner, the SIAC's Coach of the Year and Coach of the Tournament award winner.  "And as I told them, everybody on the court is just a girl with a racket."

The Lady Panthers have the SIAC's Player of the Year in Akilah Parker, one of the conference's top doubles teams in Parker and Alexis Fletcher, and the SIAC Tournament's Most Valuable Player, Madison Majors.  Vanessa Eusebio was named to the All-SIAC team, as well as the All-Tournament team.  Parker and Keyvona Moultrie also were named to the All-Tournament team.

• For more information about Lady Panther tennis, go to https://clarkatlantasports.com/index.aspx?path=tennis. 
• For information about the NCAA Division II Women's Tennis Tournament, go to https://nsusharks.com/sports/2019/5/10/2019-NCAA-WTEN-SouthRegionII.aspx.