Kennesaw State director of tennis Matt Emery added the final two pieces to his 2026-27 roster Thursday, signing Prague native Lucie Nouzová and Georgia transfer Jenelle Roberts to complete a three-player class that gives the Owls eight scholarship contributors heading into next season. Five veterans with Conference USA hardware are already set to return. That combination is the broadest roster depth the program has assembled in its CUSA era.
Roberts is the headliner: a 4-star prospect from North Gwinnett High School in Sugar Hill, Georgia, who ranked in the top 100 nationally and seventh in her home state in the Class of 2025, played 16 matches as a true freshman at Western Carolina last spring, and chose KSU over other options despite having legitimate choices up and down the college tennis ladder.
Three Newcomers, Three Different Paths
The 2026-27 signing class pulls from three distinct pipelines. Adela Zingorova, a Czech Junior Olympian from the village of Rybi, joined the KSU women’s tennis program in November 2025 as the first commitment of the cycle. Nouzová arrives from Gymnázium Budějovická in Prague, currently ranked No. 104 in Czech national women’s singles with a UTR (Universal Tennis Rating, a standardized decimal scale used to compare players across programs and countries) of 8.94. Roberts, whose UTR singles high sits at 9.0, is the only American and the only transfer in the group.
| Player | Origin | Prior Affiliation | UTR Singles High | Notable Credential |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lucie Nouzová | Prague, Czechia | Gymnázium Budějovická | 8.94 | No. 104 Czech national women’s singles ranking |
| Jenelle Roberts | Sugar Hill, GA | Western Carolina (freshman) | 9.0 | 4-star recruit, top-100 nationally, No. 7 in Georgia (Class of 2025) |
| Adela Zingorova | Rybi, Czechia | Czech junior circuit | N/A | Czech Junior Olympian |
Emery described Nouzová as “a very athletic player with a tremendous amount of upside” and said the program cannot wait to develop her game at Betty Siegel Courts in Kennesaw. That framing echoes how KSU recruited Ema Baraniakova, a junior from Leopoldov, Slovakia, who arrived at KSU in 2023 as a developmental prospect and has since earned all-conference recognition in each of her three collegiate seasons.
Roberts’ Return to Northern Georgia
The Sugar Hill native had legitimate options at every tier of college tennis when she signed with Western Carolina in November 2024. Western Carolina women’s tennis head coach Bret Beaver called her one of the program’s highest-ranked national recruits in nearly a decade at the time of signing, noting she was the Catamounts’ only American among their top three prospects by national rating. She spent one spring in Cullowhee, playing 16 matches during the 2026 dual-match season, before entering the transfer portal.
Her credentials extend well beyond that single semester on court. Roberts reached the round of 16 at the 2024 Girls 18 (G18) National Clay Court Championship, finished 12th at the UTR Pro Summer Slam in Blacksburg, Virginia, and won the 2023 Gwinnett County Player of the Year award at North Gwinnett High School. A UTR doubles high of 9.22 sits above her already-strong singles mark of 9.0, suggesting the net game coaches generally want near the top of a college doubles draw.
Jenelle is going to fit in perfectly here at KSU. She will bring not only a great work ethic and all-court game, but very valuable experience near the top of the lineup as well. We are thrilled she decided to stay in-state and help continue to elevate KSU tennis.
Matt Emery, director of tennis at Kennesaw State, in the official KSU signing announcement, May 21, 2026.
The phrase “near the top of the lineup” carries practical weight. With her doubles rating, she projects alongside Baraniakova at or near court one, where the Slovak junior competed through the entire 2025-26 schedule. Emery seldom distributes that kind of language unless a recruit has a realistic shot at the program’s first two positions from the opening week of the fall semester.
Five Returners Carrying Conference Credentials
The newcomers land on top of a returning group that earned three Conference USA postseason honors in spring 2026. All five contributors are back for 2026-27:
- Ema Baraniakova (junior, Leopoldov, Slovakia): All-CUSA Second Team Singles and Doubles in 2026; All-CUSA First Team Singles and Doubles in 2025; All-ASUN Second Team and Freshman Team in 2024; 9-7 singles record with 9-6 at line one in 2025-26; seven wins in her last 10 matches this past spring
- Maria Ivankovic (freshman in 2025-26, from Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina): CUSA All-Freshman Team; 7-6 singles record; 8-5 doubles record alongside Irene Serrano Maestre at court three, with wins in seven of their last 10 matches
- Terezia Baraniakova (junior, Leopoldov, Slovakia): reached the flight final at the fall Wofford Terrier Invite; competed in both singles and doubles through the spring schedule
- Laura Nadaska (junior, Jaslovske Bohunice, Slovakia): competed at doubles court three and contributed across the fall and spring schedules
- Irene Serrano Maestre: 8-5 in doubles alongside Ivankovic; reached her flight final at Wofford in November 2025
Ivankovic’s All-Freshman recognition is the number that shapes the 2026-27 projection most directly. Players who earn all-conference honors in their first collegiate season almost always step into larger roles as sophomores, pushing the lineup’s collective rating baseline upward and giving Emery wider flexibility when CUSA play begins in March.
Worth noting alongside the returns: Sofia Madrid, a senior from Neuquen, Argentina, who shared back-to-back All-CUSA Doubles honors with Baraniakova and closed her career on a 10-match win streak, graduated after the spring. Izabelle Persson, a senior from Linkoping, Sweden, also wrapped up her final season. Those two court-one-level doubles spots open directly into the positions where the incoming class projects by rating.
The 2025-26 Season That Set This Up
- 11-7 overall record in 2025-26, including 3-1 in Conference USA regular-season play
- 4-3 victory over Virginia Tech on March 10, the program’s first win over a Power Four conference opponent in its Division I history
- 8 consecutive wins from Feb. 18 to March 20, the second-longest winning streak in program history
- No. 3 seed at the 2026 CUSA Championships in Murfreesboro, Tennessee
- 38 total Division I-era all-conference awards across 18 honorees, with three earned in 2026 alone
Each of those milestones came from a schedule that did not spare difficulty. KSU opened the spring at Indiana, ran through Virginia Tech, Georgia Southern and South Alabama before CUSA play, and produced the 8-match winning streak in the middle of the schedule rather than at its friendly end. The Virginia Tech win also carries recruiting significance: Power Four programs rarely schedule outside the national top 50, and beating one 4-3 gives Emery a direct answer to any prospect who questions whether CUSA competition delivers preparation at the elite level.
The quarterfinal loss to Liberty, 4-1, is the asterisk that lingers. KSU met the Flames at the same CUSA stage the prior year and lost again. Two consecutive exits at the quarterfinal round against the same program gives the 2026-27 roster a specific, measurable standard to clear.
The Lineup Picture for 2026-27
Set the Czech newcomer (UTR 8.94), the Georgia transfer (UTR singles high 9.0, doubles 9.22) and Zingorova alongside five returners who held starting positions through a full 20-match spring schedule, and KSU projects to field seven or eight players with genuine conference-level singles depth for the first time in the program’s current configuration. In a CUSA environment where four or five competitive squads regularly push top-seeded programs to five or six courts in the same match week, that kind of depth has direct bracket implications.
The two open doubles spots at court one, vacated by Madrid and Persson’s graduation, slot the incoming class almost directly by rating proximity. The returning court-one pair, who spent 2025-26 building doubles cohesion through back-to-back All-CUSA Doubles seasons, add continuity at the established positions. Managing lineup depth under injury pressure has been a challenge before because the roster behind the top two players has historically thinned after the fourth slot; eight viable starters change that calculus.
Roberts’ decision to stay in Georgia is worth unpacking separately. The state consistently produces top-200 national prospects, and programs at higher conference levels recruit heavily out of Gwinnett County and the broader Atlanta-area high school circuit each fall. Her choice of KSU over those alternatives is the clearest signal yet that the program carries recruiting visibility it did not have three seasons ago. If the class integrates cleanly from September and the returning core carries its 2025-26 form into CUSA play, KSU projects as a top-two seed in the 2027 conference draw. If the adjustment runs longer than expected, a No. 3 or No. 4 seed with a better bracket path is still a material improvement on where the Owls stood when they played their first CUSA match in 2024.
