Ryan Kucera was hired as the Milwaukee women’s tennis coach in May of 2022.
In year one at the helm, Kucera led the Panthers to the semifinals of the Horizon League Tournament before falling to the eventual league-champion Youngstown State. Overall, the team went 9-14, which marked the third-most wins for a first-year head coach in program history.
“Ryan is a rising star in college women’s tennis and we are very excited to have him leading our program here at Milwaukee,” Director of Athletics Amanda Braun said at the time of his hiring. “His care for his student-athletes in their growth and development, both on and off the court, comes through in the way he approaches leadership and coaching. He has accomplished great things in his two years at Minnesota State, Mankato, and we look forward to where he can take our program in the years to come.”
Kucera achieved all of this success despite a roster that featured four newcomers out of the eight-player roster and had also graduated a first-team all-league honoree from the year prior. Despite that, MKE went 8-4 at home, advanced deep into the postseason, and saw Nadiia Konieva earn All-League First Team honors as well as the Horizon League Freshmen of the Year award.
Alice Shields (21 wins) and Konieva (20) each recorded 20-plus singles victories, the first Panthers to achieve the milestone since 2017. Shields also posted 20 doubles wins, the first to top 20+ victories in doubles since 2019. Konieva was close behind with 18.
His team did a phenomenal job in the classroom, with the program earning the Horizon League “Raise Your Sights” award for the highest GPA by a women’s team in the department. The squad was also named nationally by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) as one of its All-Academic teams, while all eight student-athletes on the active roster were named ITA Scholar Athletes.
In addition, Anika Tylek and Babette Burgersdijk were named to the Horizon League All-Academic squad, while Tylek, Burgersdijk, Giorgia Cavestro, and Iva Stejskalova were named to the College Sports Communicators Academic All-District Team.
Kucera came to Milwaukee after two years at Minnesota State University, Mankato, earning Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference Coach of the Year honors his last season following a very successful campaign on the courts.
Kucera was named NSIC Coach of the Year after leading the Mavericks to 16-10 record, which included an 8-3 ledger in NSIC play. In the process, he guided the program to the largest single-season turnaround in conference history, going from 11th place to third place in just one year.
MNSU finished tied for third in the NSIC standings, its highest finish since the 2009 season, helping three different players earn postseason honors. The eight conference victories are the most since the 2013 season and Kucera is the first-ever Maverick coach to receive NSIC Coach of the Year honors. In his short tenure, his student-athletes have broken school records for single-season doubles and singles victories.
Prior to taking the Minnesota State position, he served as a tennis professional at the Des Moines Golf and Country Club in West Des Moines. Kucera, who has served as the off-season tennis coach at a pair of Des Moines-area high schools the last two years (West Des Moines Valley High School and Urbandale High School), had also been a student assistant coach with Grand View University since 2017. In addition, he worked as a tennis Instructor at Luther College Tennis Camps and served as a Creston (Iowa) Youth Tennis Clinic Instructor for three years.
A three-year varsity tennis captain at Grand View, Kucera played in both the singles and doubles lineup for the Vikings after spending his freshman year as a member of the men's tennis team at Luther College. He graduated Magna Cum Laude with a psychology degree from Grand View in 2020.
