DETROIT (8/3/2012) -- Pjotrs Necajevs made his impact on the men's tennis team at the University of Detroit Mercy as a student athlete and now as he approaches his second full season as the women's tennis head coach, he will look to make his mark on the women's team adding two international players for the upcoming campaign.

Necajevs compiled a Titan best 55 career singles victories in two years and was just the third tennis player in Horizon League history to win back-to-back Player of the Year awards when he captured his second in 2010. He will bring in Nino Sujashvili (Tbilisi, Georgia/123 Public School) and Valeryia Kulikouskaya (Minsk, Belarus/Minsk City Olympic) from overseas as Detroit looks to contend for a Horizon League championship. 

“I am very excited about Nino and Lera [Valeryia] joining the team. They are both talented and have a great deal of international experience competing at a high level in juniors.” said Necajevs. “Both of them will be great assets in helping us compete for Horizon League Championships in the upcoming years.”

Sujashvili hails from Tbilisi, Georgia, and will enter the business administration program at UDM. She has been playing tennis since she was five years old and will look to continue her success from tournament play. As a 16 year-old, she was listed as the 38th best junior player in Europe. In 2011, she won eight of her 12 matches playing in U18 competitions, including reaching the finals of the Sunrise Open in Kyrgyzstan. She also captured the doubles championship in the 2011 President Cup in Armenia.

Kulikouskaya will join UDM from Minsk, Belarus. Having a racquet in her hands since the age of seven, she captured the National Doubles Championship twice taking the title in both the U16 and U18 competitions. She reached the final round of the Minsk Tournament this past year and has participated in competitions sponsored by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) in Minsk.

The 2012-13 roster is now complete as the two freshmen join returning juniors Raina Halabi, Julia Fernandes, Elena Strakhova, and sophomore Chloe Karoub.

As an overseas player himself, Necajevs calls Riga, Latvia home, Sujashvili and Kulikouskaya join Strakhova as current overseas players on the women's squad. Canadians Halabi and Fernandes also add to the international flavor on the Titans with Karoub the lone American-bred player.