ORLANDO Fla.—University of Hawai'i women's tennis player No. 61 Petra Melounova will make her program-record third appearance at the NCAA Women's Singles Championship this coming Monday, May 20. The national tournament will be held from May 20-25 and this year, the tournament is hosted by the University of Central Florida and the Greater Orlando Sports Commission at the United States Tennis Association's (USTA) National Campus in Orlando, Florida. Melounova will open the tournament with a first round match against No. 60 Jessica Golovin from LSU at 6:00 a.m. on Monday morning. Golovin is a senior who will be competing in the NCAA tournament for the second time in her career. This past season, she recorded a 14-7 dual match record playing all her matches on the No. 2 court. 
 
Melounova, a junior from Havlickuv Brod, Czech Republic, recently earned her UH-record third-straight Big West Player of the Year award. She finished the regular season nationally ranked at No. 61 in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association's (ITA) poll. As the highest ranked player in the Big West, she earned her third-consecutive automatic bid into the NCAA tournament. Melounova is one of 15 players who earned their conference's automatic bid. It is the fifth time in the last six years that a UH player has earned the league's automatic bid into the tourney. Former UH standout Cindy Nguyen represented the Rainbow Wahine twice in 2014-15.
 
This season, Melounova played all her matches on the No. 1 court and led the Rainbow Wahine with a 13-2 dual match record. She won 15 of her last 16 overall singles matches—including her last seven straight. Melounova upset three ranked players this spring—No. 34 Salma Ewing (#32 USC), No. 30 Julia Rosenqvist (#15 California), and No. 86 Maddie Pothoff (Santa Clara). She enters the tournament with a career dual match record of 41-8.
  
As a freshman, Melounova became the first UH player to ever earn a win in the NCAA Tournament, upsetting 16th-ranked Rachel Pierson (Texas A&M) in the opening round before falling in the second round in straight sets to LSU's Joana Valle Costa. Last season, Melounova, who entered the tourney ranked No. 73, fell to No. 21 Gabriela Talaba (Texas Tech) in three sets.
 
Melounova gives the Big West a representative in the singles championship for the eighth straight year, and 12th time in the last 14 years. She is the only player from the Big West to be competing in this year's tournament. Melounova is the first Big West player to appear in three NCAA Singles championships since UNLV's Marianne Vallin and UC Santa Barbara's Jean Okada participated in three straight tourneys from 1994-96.