{"id":636741,"date":"2026-04-28T18:29:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T18:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/636741\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T18:29:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T18:29:09","slug":"kuzmenok-named-player-of-the-year-earns-all-conference-honors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/636741\/","title":{"rendered":"Kuzmenok Named Player of the Year; Earns All-Conference Honors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>IRVING \u2013 Junior <a href=\"https:\/\/riceowls.com\/sports\/mens-tennis\/roster\/petro-kuzmenok\/10476\" rel=\"smarttag nofollow noopener\" rev=\"10476\" target=\"_blank\">Petro Kuzmenok<\/a> became the first Rice Owl to earn American Conference Player of the Year honors, headlining Rice&#8217;s postseason awards, the league announced Tuesday.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nKuzmenok also earned All-Conference recognition in both singles and doubles, teaming with <a href=\"https:\/\/riceowls.com\/sports\/mens-tennis\/roster\/santiago-navarro\/10478\" rel=\"smarttag nofollow noopener\" rev=\"10478\" target=\"_blank\">Santiago Navarro<\/a> on the doubles side. The duo closed the season ranked No. 42 in the latest ITA rankings, while Kuzmenok finished No. 59 in singles.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nKuzmenok put together a strong season, earning two Player of the Week honors and one Player of the Month award while posting a 12-6 record in dual singles. Alongside Navarro, he went 14-2 in dual doubles play and 21-4 overall. Navarro also earned American Conference Player of the Week honors during the season.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nThe pair&#8217;s success extended beyond the spring, as they won the American Conference doubles title in the fall and advanced to the NCAA Individual Doubles Championship. They also repeated as doubles All-Conference selections after earning the honor last season.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nNo. 49 Rice closed the 2026 season with a 15-8 overall record and an 8-0 mark in conference play.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"IRVING \u2013 Junior Petro Kuzmenok became the first Rice Owl to earn American Conference Player of the Year&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":636742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-636741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=636741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}