Women's Tennis | June 18

DeKALB, Ill. – Northern Illinois University women's tennis head coach Eric Burns announced the signing of transfer Maria Dzemeshkevich, an all-conference player from the University of Houston who spent the last three seasons at the No. 1 and No. 2 singles positions for the Cougars.
 
"We are very excited to sign Maria and welcome her to NIU," said Burns. "We were hoping to find an experienced player who could take our team to another level with our final scholarship. We think we have found this with Maria. She plays an aggressive, attacking style that will fit in well with our team and is also a great student. I'm excited to work with her and that she chose to finish her career with us. We are going to work hard to make sure she has a great final year of college tennis."
 
Dzemeshkevich led Houston in singles victories as a freshman with 13 en route to All American Athletic Conference honors. She helped the Cougars to a pair of 14-win seasons in 2022 and 2023 playing at the top of the singles line-up and contributing in doubles. Last year, she earned UH's first singles win as a member of the Big 12 Conference.
 
A native of Moscow, Russia, Dzemeshkevich has been ranked as high as 260 in the International Tennis Federation junior singles ranking with an ITF women's professional ranking as high as 1647. Dzemeshkevich comes to NIU with a current Universal Tennis Rating (UTR) of 8.75 and has had a rating as high as 10.29.
 
A computer science major, Dzemeshkevich twice earned College Sports Communicators (CSC) Academic All-District honors at UH.
 
Dzemeshkevich joins freshmen Irmak Budak (Istanbul, Turkey), Theodora Kousiou (Thessaloniki, Greece) and Lucia Yecora (Seville, Spain) in the Huskies' incoming class for 2024-25.  NIU graduated four seniors from the 2023-24 roster after finishing the dual match campaign 16-10 overall and 5-5 in the Mid-American Conference.
 
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