Three Jayhawks named First-Team All-Americans

LAWRENCE, Kan. – Kansas seniors Nina Khmelnitckaia, Janet Koch and Anastasia Rychagova have been named First-Team All-Americans by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA). They earned the distinction by virtue of their seeds in the singles (Rychagova) and doubles (Koch and Khmelnitckaia) draws at the NCAA Tennis Championship earlier in May.

Khmelnitckaia and Koch finished the 2018-19 season as the ITA’s No. 5-ranked doubles team in the nation and were seeded between fifth and eighth in the 32-team doubles draw at the NCAAs. The duo, which earned the Big 12 Conference’s automatic bid to the national tournament, beat Stanford’s duo of Caroline Lampl and Kimberly Yee for the second time this season before losing in the tournament’s Sweet 16 round to Tulsa’s Martina Okalova and Vera Ploner in a match that featured three tiebreakers. The Jayhawk duo concluded the 2018-19 season with an overall record of 26-6, 17-4 vs. ranked opponents.

Rychagova wrapped up her illustrious four-year Kansas career ranked as the No. 11 singles player in the nation. She earned the Big 12’s automatic bid in singles, and was seeded between ninth and 16th in the 64-person singles bracket. Rychagova won her first two matches in Orlando over Denver’s Bianca Mok and California’s Julia Rosenqvist, respectively, to advance to the Sweet 16. There, she lost to the No. 2 seed, Georgia’s Katarina Jokic, in three sets, and thus ended her 2018-19 season with an overall record of 22-4, including a 13-4 record against ranked opponents.

“All three seniors, Janet, Nas, and Nina, have left such a great legacy for future KU women’s tennis players to look up to and strive to achieve and exceed,” head coach Todd Chapman said.

“These three young women are so deserving of this honor and all three ended their collegiate careers on such a high note. They are the best of the best and deserve so much credit for the historic season we just concluded.”