Virginia signs Melodie Collard, Nicole Kiefer

Posted on Thursday, Jun. 17, 2021, 5:07 pm

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Courtesy UVA Media Relations

Virginia women’s tennis head coach Sara O’Leary announced this week that Melodie Collard and Nicole Kiefer are the latest additions to a recruiting class ranked No. 6 by TennisRecruiting.net.

Collard (Gatineau, Canada) is the current ITF junior world no. 21. The Quebec native has won four ITF junior singles and five doubles titles en route to a career high ranking of no. 17. Melodie was the singles runner-up at both the 2019 Coffee Bowl in San Jose, Costa Rica and the 2019 Grade 1 Juniors tournament in Merida, Mexico. Melodie has appeared in the 2019 Junior French Open, the 2019 Junior U.S. Open and the 2020 Junior Australian Open, twice advancing past the first round. In addition, Melodie has represented Canada as a member of the 2019 Junior Fed Cup team. Most recently, Melodie has competed in three ITF World Tennis Tour tournaments this year in Antalya, Turkey, including a quarterfinal run the last week of March.

“We are thrilled Melodie will be joining our program this fall. Melodie has the experience of playing at the highest levels of junior tennis, having competed in multiple junior grand slams, and is one of the best players in the world. She aspires to play professional tennis one day and we look forward to providing Melodie the support and resources at UVA to help her accomplish this goal. Not only is Melodie a great player but she is someone who we feel shares our team values of respect, resilience and unity. We can’t wait to start working with Melodie this fall!”

Kiefer (The Woodlands, Texas) is a five-star recruit ranked as high as No. 52 in the TennisRecruiting.net national rankings and is in the top-10 in both the Texas and Gulf States rankings. Kiefer, who trains at the One Tennis Academy, won both the singles and doubles titles at the 2019 Liamuiga Oualie Junior Championship in St. Kitts & Nevis. She also had back-to-back quarterfinal runs at the 2020 Costa Rica Bowl and Jalisco Junior Cup and was a semifinalist at the Queretaro Junior Cup. She is the younger sister of Cavalier freshman men’s tennis player Alexander Kiefer.

“We are so excited to welcome Nicole into our UVA family. Nicole is an excellent player and student who I know is going to make a very positive impact on the program, school and community. Her work ethic, team-first mentality and potential really stood out to us, and we could not be more excited that Nicole will be joining us this fall!”

O’Leary previously announced the signing of five-star Blue Chip recruit Elaine Chervinsky.