Tennis Set for MAC Fall Individuals This Weekend

FALL TOURNAMENT #2 - MAC INDIVIDUAL FALL CHAMPIONSHIPS
Date	Friday-Sunday, Oct. 3-5, 2025 \| 9 a.m. each day
Venue	West Hills Athletic Club \| Kalamazoo, Mich.
Preview Info	EMU Notes (pdf)
Tourney Info	MAC Championship Page
Live Scores	Day 1 \| Day 2 \| Day 3
Social Media	X: @EMUEaglesTennis \| Instagram: @EMU_Tennis

YPSILANTI, Mich. (EMUEagles.com) -- The Eastern Michigan University tennis team will battle for conference titles this weekend when four members of the team head to West Hills Athletic Club in Kalamazoo, Mich., Oct. 3-5, to compete in the 2025 Mid-American Conference Individual Fall Championships. The tournament, in its second year, will crown champions in singles and doubles with those winners heading to the ITA Conference Masters Championships, Nov. 6-9, in San Diego, Calif.

ON THE COURTS FOR EASTERN
Here are the Eagles that could compete in the 2025 MAC Fall Individuals:
Singles
Lara Diaz Zayas (So.) • 0-3 | Competed in Group 1 at the Block E Invitational to open the season
Matilde Parreira (Fr.) • 3-0 | Won Group 8 at the Block E Invitational
Doubles
Lara Diaz Zayas (So.) & Pehal Kharadkar (Fr.) • 0-0 | Have not played together yet this season
Matilde Parreira (Fr.) & Sabrina Tolstova (Fr.) • 1-1 | Went 1-1 together at the Block E Invitational

FIRST SERVES
» The MAC Individual Fall Championships is the first league championship event of the academic year and marks the second consecutive year the individual event will be played. Ahead of the 2024-25 season, the NCAA moved its singles and doubles championship events to the fall so only the team competition would be played in the spring.
» In last year's event, Sabrina Brichackova and Prerna Vichare, both playing in their senior seasons, advanced to the final of the inaugural doubles tournament before falling in straight sets.
» The Eagles opened their 2025 fall slate two weeks ago when they hosted the Block E Invitational (Sept. 19-20) at the Chippewa Club. Both Matilde Parreira and Cylova Zuleyka Hukmasabiyya posted 3-0 records to win their respective singles groups.
» The 2025-26 Eastern Michigan roster features eight players from eight countries and four continents. Included on the roster are four returning Eagles in Iva Daneva, Lara Diaz Zayas, Regina Mendez Carreño, and Kseniia Saenko, and four newcomers in Pehal Kharadkar, Matilde Parreira, Sabrina Tolstova, and Cylova Zuleyka Hukmasabiyya.
» With the four freshmen included, the EMU roster boasts players from eight countries, including Argentina, India, Indonesia, Mexico, North Macedonia, Portugal, Russia, and Ukraine. All told, the Eagles are represented on four continents, including North America, South America, Europe, and Asia.
» The Eagles are experiencing a youth movement as the eight-player roster includes four freshmen, two sophomores, one junior, and one senior.
» Ryan Kucera returns for his third season as the team's head coach and will look to guide the team to the MAC Tournament for the second time. He has guided the team to back-to-back 12-win seasons for the first time since the 2002-03 and 2003-04 seasons when Tim Gray led the team to consecutive 16-win campaigns.

EVENT INFO: THE TEAMS
Nine schools compete in tennis in the Mid-American Conference, and all will be represented in the tournament this week. Along with EMU, the teams represented include Ball State, Bowling Green, Buffalo, Miami, Northern Illinois, Toledo, UMass, and host Western Michigan. The tournament marks the first championship event in the MAC for UMass after joining in all sports this summer while the event also marks the start of the final academic year of NIU in the league.

EVENT INFO: THE EAGLES
A youthful group of Eagles will take part in the MAC Individual Fall Championships with the group comprised of one sophomore in Lara Diaz Zayas and three freshmen in Pehal Kharadkar, Matilde Parreira, and Sabrina Tolstova. Both Diaz Zayas and Perreira will play in the singles competition while EMU's two doubles entrants will include the teams of Diaz Zayas/Kharadkar and Perreira/Tolstova.

EVENT INFO: THE FORMAT
The MAC Individual Fall Championships will be comprised of two tournaments, including an 18-player singles competition and an 18-team doubles event with all nine schools permitted to enter up to two players in singles and two doubles teams. The singles competition will begin Oct. 3 with first-round play at 1 p.m. with the quarterfinals taking place Oct. 4 at 1 p.m. The semifinals and final will be played Oct. 5. The doubles competition will open with the first round at 9 a.m., Oct. 3, with quarterfinals (9 a.m.) and semifinals (11 a.m.) on Oct. 4. The championship match will be played at 12 p.m. or 1 p.m., Oct. 5, with the start time determined upon if any of the competitors competed in the semifinals of the singles tournament that morning.

EVENT INFO: THE STAKES
The winners of the singles and doubles tournaments will earn the league's automatic berth into the 2025 ITA Conference Masters Championship that will be held Nov. 6-9 at the Barnes Tennis Center in San Diego, Calif. The event will be one for four ITA events utilized as the qualifying path into the NCAA Division I Championships, Nov. 18-23, at the UTSA National Campus in Orlando, Fla. The event will mark the second year the NCAA has its individual (singles and doubles) to the fall with only the team titles being played for in the spring.

REVIEW: 2024 MAC INDIVIDUALS
Singles
The singles tournament featured two players, each from the then-eight MAC schools sponsoring women's tennis with Iva Daneva and Sabina Brichackova representing the Eagles. Daneva, then a freshman, drew Sara Zalukar of Miami in the opening round and looked like she was making an early exit as she trailed, 6-0, 5-2, in her match before making an incredible comeback. Daneva played her way into a second-set tiebreaker at 6-6 before winning the tie break in a marathon, 16-14, to even the score at one set each. In the third, Daneva continued to improve and won, 6-1, to capture the victory. She would fall in the quarterfinals in a 6-0, 6-4 decision to Northern Illinois' Nataly Ninova. Brichackova also competed in the singles tournament, but fell in her opening match, 6-2, 6-3, to Elena Malykh of Ball State.

Doubles
Entering the tournament, Brichackova and Prerna Vichare played 50 times together and sported a 31-19 career record together. Those matches paid off as the duo tallied a 7-5, 6-4 win in the quarterfinals over Ball State's Sara Shahbaz and Isabelle Tanjuatco to reach the semifinals. With a spot in the final on the line, the EMU duo dug deep and found a way to win, taking the match, 6-7(6), 6-2, 1-0(5), over Maria Glowacka and Jagmeet Kaur of Buffalo. In the finals, the homestanding RedHawk duo of Emilia Valentinsson and Zalukar took the match with the Eagles finishing as the runners-up, 6-1, 6-3.

RECAP: BLOCK E INVITATIONAL
Eastern Michigan opened its 2025 fall slate by playing host to the Block E Invitational (Sept. 19-02) with six players taking the court, including all four freshmen. Two of the newcomers, Matilde Parreira and Cylova Zuleyka Hukmasabiyya, went 3-0 in singles play to capture the titles in Group 8 and Group 2, respectively, to lead the way for the Eagles.

FIRST WINS
All four newcomers to the program competed at the Block E Invitational (Sept. 19-20) at the Chippewa Club with each recording the first wins in their collegiate careers. Both Matilde Parreira and Cylova Zuleyka Hukmasabiyya collected four wins on opening weekend as they both posted perfect 3-0 records in singles action while adding one win in doubles play. Additionally, Pehal Kharadkar captured her first collegiate win in singles play while Sabrina Tolstova earned her first victory in a doubles match with Perreira as her partner.

STRAIGHT TO THE POINTS
Not only did Matilde Parreira and Cylova Zuleyka Hukmasabiyya post undefeated records in singles action, but both did also so without dropping a set. Perreira led the way by losing just 14 games in the six sets she played while Zuleyka Hukmasabiyya surrendered only 19 with two of her matches coming against MAC foes (Bowling Green and Toledo).

ON THE HORIZON
Eastern Michigan returns to the courts Oct. 10-12 with several members of the team heading down the street to Ann Arbor for the 2025 Michigan Invitational, hosted by the University of Michigan.

FOLLOW US
For all things EMU Tennis, be sure to check out the team's social media accounts, including EMUEaglesTennis on X (formerly Twitter) and EMU_Tennis on Instagram.

Next Event

Players Mentioned

Sabina Brichackova

Iva Daneva

Lara Diaz Zayas

Pehal Kharadkar

Regina Mendez Carreño

Matilde Parreira

Kseniia Saenko

Sabrina Tolstova

Prerna Vichare

Cylova Zuleyka Hukmasabiyya

Eastern Michigan Athletics