Goldey-Beacom College, no stranger to the Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference Women's Tennis Tournament, will join forces with Wilmington University in co-hosting this fall's version of the event.
The four-team tournament for a second straight year will be contested at Delcastle Tennis Center in Wilmington, which has indoor and outdoor courts in serving as home both for the Lightning and Wildcats. The festivities begin Friday, October 21 with the banquet, followed Saturday by the semifinals and Sunday by the final.
The conference champion earns an automatic berth into the NCAA Tournament, which will be contested in the spring of 2023.
Goldey-Beacom looks to get back into the tournament after making it 12 straight years (2008-19), winning the 2016 and 2017 championships and also playing in the final five additional times (2009-11, 2014, 2019).
That success helped the Lightning advance to the NCAA Tournament eight times, highlighted by their 2019 appearance in the "Sweet 16" to cap a run of being nationally ranked at the end of the season three times in five years (2015, 2018, 2019).
That success saw former head coach Joe Kissel inducted last spring into the GBC Athletics Hall of Fame. He produced 148 wins during his 13 seasons that included the 2014-15 team finishing 31st in the country, the 2017-18 squad ending 32nd and the 2018-19 unit ending 44th. The Lightning also posted winning campaigns in his final 11 seasons dating to 2008-09 and double-digit victories in nine of the last 11 campaigns.
The 2014-15 season was one of the most memorable with the squad winning a program-record 18 matches and upending CACC-foe Chestnut Hill. This allowed Goldey-Beacom to become the first squad in school history in any sport to win a head-to-head NCAA Tournament contest.
