Photo by: Saint Mary's Athletics / Tod Fierner
5/4/2022 9:50:00 AM | Women's Tennis
INDIANAPOLIS – Saint Mary's Women's Tennis player Mariia Kozyreva has received an at-large selection to participate in the NCAA Division I Women's Tennis Championships May 23-28 in at the Khan Outdoor Tennis Complex in Champaign, Illinois.
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Kozyreva becomes the third player in SMC Women's Tennis History to reach the NCAA Tournament in the singles bracket, along with Alex Poorta (2010) and Jenny Jullien (2013 and '14).
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"Masha" made the doubles tournament in 2019 with her partner Hind Abdelouahid, and would have participated in the singles competition on two different occasions if they were interrupted by COVID-19.
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The 2020 tournament was cancelled due to the pandemic and she wasn't able to qualify last season despite an 11-1 record in the spring since she didn't play in the fall, and thus didn't have enough wins against ranked opponents.
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Saint-Petersburg, Russia native received the WCC's at-large bid after going 23-6 overall this season with wins over the #2 and #9 players in the country in Abigail Forbes of UCLA and WCC Tournament Champion Shiroi Fukuda of Pepperdine. The win over Fukuda netted her a WCC Player of the Week Award and she finished the season ranked No. 43 in the nation.
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This season alone she advanced to the ITA National Fall Championship Quarterfinals, the ITA Division-I Northwest Regional Semifinals, and defeated the No. 1 seed at the KPSF Open in San Francisco, Sai-Sai Zheng from China, who was ranked No. 75 in the world at the time.
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Kozyreva was again named to the All-WCC first team in singles and doubles, and was All-WCC Second Team as a freshman.
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All matches at the NCAA Championships will be the best-of-three sets. No-ad scoring and a seven-point tiebreaker (first to seven points, must win by two points) at six-games-all will be used for all matches.
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Kozyreva becomes the third player in SMC Women's Tennis History to reach the NCAA Tournament in the singles bracket, along with Alex Poorta (2010) and Jenny Jullien (2013 and '14).
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"Masha" made the doubles tournament in 2019 with her partner Hind Abdelouahid, and would have participated in the singles competition on two different occasions if they were interrupted by COVID-19.
Â
The 2020 tournament was cancelled due to the pandemic and she wasn't able to qualify last season despite an 11-1 record in the spring since she didn't play in the fall, and thus didn't have enough wins against ranked opponents.
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Saint-Petersburg, Russia native received the WCC's at-large bid after going 23-6 overall this season with wins over the #2 and #9 players in the country in Abigail Forbes of UCLA and WCC Tournament Champion Shiroi Fukuda of Pepperdine. The win over Fukuda netted her a WCC Player of the Week Award and she finished the season ranked No. 43 in the nation.
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This season alone she advanced to the ITA National Fall Championship Quarterfinals, the ITA Division-I Northwest Regional Semifinals, and defeated the No. 1 seed at the KPSF Open in San Francisco, Sai-Sai Zheng from China, who was ranked No. 75 in the world at the time.
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Kozyreva was again named to the All-WCC first team in singles and doubles, and was All-WCC Second Team as a freshman.
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All matches at the NCAA Championships will be the best-of-three sets. No-ad scoring and a seven-point tiebreaker (first to seven points, must win by two points) at six-games-all will be used for all matches.
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Players Mentioned
/ Women's Tennis
Sunday, October 25
Sunday, October 25
Saturday, October 24
Saturday, October 24
