COACHING STAFF

Anousjka van Exel  |  Women's Volunteer Assistant Coach

Former WTA Top 100 professional tennis player Anousjka van Exel joined the Rice Owls as the volunteer assistant coach in 2016.

Prior to joining the Owls, van Exel was the sports nutritionist of the AZ professional soccer squad in her native country, The Netherlands, for five years.

After concluding her professional tennis career, van Exel served as an assistant coach for two seasons at Baylor (2008-09). In her first season, the Lady Bears reached as high as second in the ITA rankings during the year and finished ranked fourth, their highest ranking ever, finishing at 32-3. The Lady Bears won their fifth-straight Big 12 Conference regular season championship and their fourth-straight conference tournament championship.

During her first semester at Baylor van Exel completed her master's degree in exercise and sports nutrition at Texas Woman's University. She also holds a bachelor's degree in kinesiology from Tulsa University, where she graduated magna cum laude in 1999.

During van Exel's collegiate career, she was twice honored as the Western Athletic Conference Player of the Year (1998, 1999). In that two year span, van Exel also was named an NCAA All-American, an All-WAC first-team member in singles and doubles, an Academic All-WAC first-team member, an Intercollegiate Tennis Association Academic All-American, and was a GTE CoSIDA Academic All-America award recipient in 1999.

As a professional, van Exel played from 2001 to 2004; she competed on some of the biggest stages including the U.S. Open, French Open, Wimbledon and the Australian Open. Her best result was reaching the round of 16 Australian Open doubles in 2002. In one of her most memorable moments, van Exel faced Martina Navratilova and Todd Woodbridge in front of a sold-out center court crowd at Wimbledon.

Van Exel also competed for the Netherlands as a member of her native lands 2003 Fed Cup team.

Bojan Szumanski  |  Men's Assistant Coach

Bojan Szumanski heads into his ninth year as the Owls' assistant men's tennis coach.

During his eight years on South Main, Szumanski has helped guide the Owls to a pair of conference titles and a return to the national top 30 and NCAA action in both team and individual events. In the Owls' most recently completed season (2018-19), Sumit Sarkar qualified for the NCAA Singles Championship and was named the C-USA Player of the Year.

Szumanski joined the Owls from Western Michigan, where he served as the assistant coach for two years. In his final season with the Broncos, Szumanski helped lead the team to the Mid-American Conference (MAC) championship and a berth in the NCAA tournament while seeing junior Nadin Indre earn MAC Player of the Year honors

Szumanski played collegiately at Texas Tech. Playing primarily at both No. 1 singles and No. 1 doubles, Szumanski is the Red Raiders' career wins leader in singles (90) and doubles (61), while qualifying for the NCAA Singles Championships three times (2005, 07-08) and the NCAA doubles twice (2007-08). The Red Raiders reached the tournament as a team in 2005, 2007 and 2008, advancing past the first round in both 2005 (round of 16) and 2008 (second round).

Szumanski earned multiple honors during his collegiate career as a three-time All-Big 12 singles honoree and two-time All-Big 12 doubles honoree. He was also an ESPN the Magazine Academic All-America At-Large Third Team selection in both 2005 and 2008, while making the Academic All-District VI First Team three times. Szumanski was nationally ranked in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association throughout his career, reaching a high of No. 2 in doubles and No. 12 in singles.

A three-time Academic All-Big 12 selection, Szumanski graduated from Texas Tech summa cum laude with a 3.93 grade point average and bachelor of science degree in personal financial planning in 2008.

Szumanski played professional tennis on both the ATP and ITF circuits after completing his college career. In 2009, he reached career highs of No. 574 in doubles and No. 905 in singles on the ATP Tour.

He won the ITF Futures Poland F7 in doubles in 2008 and was a runner-up at ITF Futures in Romania (August 2008) and Mansfield, Texas (Oct. 2008). He won the Polish National Indoor Championship in doubles in 2010 and Polish National Team Championship from 2009-12, while also playing No. 1 for TCM Markwasen in Germany from 2009-11.

The Rice Tennis Camps have brought together some of the finest instructors available. In addition to players from the Rice men’s and women’s teams, we also have teaching professionals from throughout the region.