#10 Tartans Selected to NCAA Championship Field for 20th Time to Program History
(INDIANAPOLIS, Ind.) – The Carnegie Mellon University women's tennis team has been selected to compete for the 2026 NCAA Division III Women's Tennis Championship and will travel to Baltimore, Maryland, for the first, second and third rounds of competition from Friday, May 8 through Sunday, May 10. The appearance in the postseason event will be the 20th for the program, all coming under head coach Andrew Girard.
The 10th-ranked Tartans will begin play against St. Mary's College of Maryland on Friday, May 8 at Johns Hopkins University. The winner of the match will face the winner of 15th-ranked Case Western Reserve University (12-6) and Albright College (14-4) on Saturday. Fifth-ranked Johns Hopkins (12-6) will await the winner of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (12-6) and Allegheny College (16-6) for a match on Saturday. The respective Saturday winners will play on Sunday.
Sunday's winners will advance to the NCAA Quarterfinals at the Champions Tennis Club in Chattanoga, Tennessee, from May 18-21.
The Tartans placed fourth in the University Athletic Assocation (UAA) and have a lineup that features three players with more than 20 wins in singles play. Freshman Ika Kanumuri leads the team with a 25-9 singles mark and a 23-10 doubles record including an 11-5 doubles mark at the first position with sophomore Kotishta Modak. Both Kanumuri and freshman Jane Wong, who has a singles record of 23-9, will be named All-Americans at the end of the season thanks in part to winning first-round matches at the ITA Cup in October. They are joined in the lineup by sophomore Shelly Zinchenko, the school record holder for singles wins in a season with 31 set last year, who currently has a 24-12 single mark. Senior Divya Venkatarama has a career singles record of 77-31 (.713) and doubles mark of 84-51 (.622) and is fourth all time in matches played and tied for fourth in total victories. Sophomore Ancele Dolensek was an All-American in 2025 after winning the ITA Southeast Regional singles title during her first season as a Tartan. Additionally, sophomore Kotistha Modak, a transfer from Wellesley College, and sophomore Victoria Gazda have singles records of 14-5 and 19-7, respectively.
All match times are still to be determined and will be announced as soon as information is available.
View full bracket (pdf)