Iowa State women’s tennis will open its 2025 fall season Friday at the 77th annual Blue Gray National Tennis Classic at the Lagoon Park Tennis Center in Montgomery, Alabama.
Four players from each school will compete for the women’s bracket: Auburn, Georgia Tech, Jacksonville State, Louisiana State, Mississippi State, the University of Mississippi and the University of Alabama (Birmingham) will be competing alongside Iowa State.
This year, the tournament will feature a different format. The SEC’s expanded conference schedule has caused conflicts with the tournament’s usual February time slot. Forcing the organizers to adapt the tournament for the fall season’s focus on singles and doubles championships and away from the spring season’s focus on team championships.
The tournament this year will have the four players from the team split up into two pairs and go into two separate draws. The pairs will play one doubles match and two singles matches against the same pair to form a best two out of three to complete each round, with the winner moving on to the next round.
The four players representing Iowa State for this tournament will be sophomore Julia Camblor, junior Ashlee Narker, sophomore Mari Paz Alberto Vilar and junior transfer Stanislava Shulzhenko from the University of North Texas.
Camblor is coming off a strong freshman season, where she earned Second Team All-Big 12 honors in singles and a spot on the Big 12 All-Freshman team while also being the first Iowa State player in school history to be named ITA Central Region Rookie of the Year. Camblor went 25-9 in singles, the most wins ever of any Iowa State freshman. She will be paired up with Narker.
Narker showed promise last year, going 7-2 in singles and 7-4 in doubles during the fall season, but missed the spring season due to injury. She has been acknowledged on the Big 12 Commissioner’s Honor Roll for the past three semesters.
Vilar is also coming off a nice freshman year, going 18-10 in singles and 12-18 in doubles. She earned a spot on the Academic All-Big 12 Rookie Team in the spring season and was on the Big 12 Commissioner’s Honor Roll for the fall and spring semesters in 2024 and 2025. She will be teamed up with Shulzhenko.
Shulzhenko will make her Iowa State debut after transferring from the University of North Texas, where she went 13-6 in singles and 11-8 in doubles in her sophomore year.
This will begin Iowa State head coach Jaron Maestas’ third season as the head coach of the Iowa State Women’s tennis team, leading them to a 15-28 record in his tenure.
In his first year as head coach in 2023-2024, the team went 4-17. Maestas was leading a team that had one returning member from the year before, while also playing much of the season without a full lineup.
Maestas’ second season took a major step in the right direction as the team went 11-11 and peaked at being ranked number 46 in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association’s rankings, ending the year ranked 65th in Division I Women’s tennis.
All but one member of that team was an underclassman, and all but two members of that team will return for this season, with one transferring away and the other, being the only senior on the team, graduated. This year, they will look to continue the progress made from the 2024-2025 season.
The first round of the Blue Gray National Tennis Classic in Montgomery, Alabama will begin Friday and finish Sunday.
