KU tennis takes early momentum into upcoming matches

By Henry Greenstein Feb 6, 2025

The Kansas tennis team gathers at the match against Wichita State on Friday, Jan. 31, 2025, in Lawrence.

Off to a 5-0 start, the Kansas women’s tennis team will look to keep surging as it welcomes two more strong opponents to the Jayhawk Tennis Center.

If the Jayhawks can defeat Wisconsin on Friday and Arkansas on Sunday — with both teams sitting at 3-1 to open their winter schedules, and the Badgers already holding a ranked win — KU will have seven victories in a row to start a year for the first time since head coach Todd Chapman’s first season, the 2013-14 campaign.

Granted, that season saw the Jayhawks lose seven straight later on and finish a fitting 12-12. KU will hope for something that looks a lot more like 2015-16, when it also opened 5-0 and ultimately tied for second in the Big 12, the best league position this century, or 2018-19, Chapman’s best season, in which the Jayhawks won the conference tournament.

For now, KU is in the midst of a lengthy homestand after it started its campaign at the Duel in the Desert in Palm Springs, California, in mid-January. Then, in the span of a week, the Jayhawks welcomed Kansas City, Creighton, Iowa, Wichita State and Omaha to Lawrence and beat all five, losing just three combined individual matches in the process.

“At the end of the day, it just comes down to competing and fighting and the tennis will get better,” Chapman said in a press release last Friday after victories over Wichita State and Omaha. “But those were things that we hope are staples of our program, so it was good to see that. We’re excited about where we are at this point, and we’re (going to) rest up the next couple days and get ready for two tough matches next weekend.”

The doubles partnership of former South Carolina transfer Gracie Mulville and fellow junior Heike Janse van Vuuren, which climbed to a national ranking of No. 53 by the end of the fall term, is now 5-0 in the winter. It’s the first Kansas pairing with that record since Nina Khmelnitckaia and Janet Koch in 2019, a season in which those two at one point ascended to No. 1 in the nation and eventually earned All-American honors. Both Mulville and van Vuuren have also started strong in singles.

Other familiar faces in the lineup include sophomore Kyoka Kubo, who finished 2024 18-4 in singles and has continued apace this season at 4-0 in various positions in KU’s lineup, and seniors Jasmine Adams and Maria Titova, a former all-conference selection.

A midseason addition who previously won individual and team national titles at the JUCO level at Cowley College, Yerkezhan Arystanbekova notched two official singles victories as a Jayhawk against foes from Wichita State and Omaha. Fellow newcomer Anna Putilina is also unbeaten through five matches, both at No. 6 singles and No. 3 doubles (paired with Arystanbekova and freshman Meriem Ben Ezzedine).

The extremely international roster features as many players from the United States (Mulville and freshman Simryn Jacob) as Australia (Adams and freshman Ashley Katz) and also Russia (Putilina and Titova), which has yielded many of the Jayhawks’ best talents in recent years. Japan (Kubo), Kazakhstan (Arystanbekova), South Africa (van Vuuren) and Tunisia (Ben Ezzedine) are also represented in Lawrence. Chapman didn’t have to go far to sign Free State High School standout Kinley VanPelt, a member of the 2025 recruiting class.

At the moment, KU is three weeks from beginning competition in the Big 12, in which it was picked to come in eighth of 16 teams this season. The Jayhawks’ first league match is at Texas Tech on Feb. 28. They will look to mount a strong effort in league play and return to the NCAA Tournament after a rare absence from postseason play in 2023-24, when they went 10-14 (4-7 Big 12).

Kansas junior Heike Janse Van Vuuren celebrates during the match against Omaha on Friday, Jan. 31, 2025, in Lawrence.

Kansas junior Gracie Mulville celebrates during the match against Omaha on Friday, Jan. 31, 2025, in Lawrence.

Kansas head coach Todd Chapman watches his team during a match against Wichita State on Friday, Jan. 31, 2025, in Lawrence.

Kansas sophomore Yerkezhan Arystanbekova connects with the ball during a match against Wichita State on Friday, Jan. 31, 2025, in Lawrence.

Kansas sophomore Kyoka Kubo, right, high-fives senior teammate Jasmine Adams during a match against Wichita State on Friday, Jan. 31, 2025, in Lawrence.

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Written By Henry Greenstein

Henry is the sports editor at the Lawrence Journal-World and KUsports.com, and serves as the KU beat writer while managing day-to-day sports coverage. He previously worked as a sports reporter at The Bakersfield Californian and is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis (B.A., Linguistics) and Arizona State University (M.A., Sports Journalism). Though a native of Los Angeles, he has frequently been told he does not give off "California vibes," whatever that means.

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