I like it.
I’m a little surprised with how good of a job this is now that we would hire someone 4 years out of college with no HC experience, but she has a very strong resume and I’m very relieved that we did not just promote an assistant. I hope she will be able to keep our strong core and sign some of the girls she had recruited to Auburn.
I’d rather roll the dice on a great young female coach than play it safe.
Looks like a quality hire.
Assistant coach on an SEC champion and national runner-up team.
Her connections to Eastern Europe might also help in recruiting.
Official press release for those of you who would like to read more about Coach Zeleva:
Imho the strongest piece of her resume isn’t that she coached one of the sport’s truly elite teams this season (but that’s a strong positive), but that in her 1st season as a newly hired college assistant (23-24) she helped keep a disaster season together when Auburn had to fire the then-head coach/top assistant for unspecified off the field stuff and she helped keep the roster together and have a good season, while helping keep multiple key younger players around who ended up being the leaders on this year’s national runner up team.
UH nailed this hire.
Her first recruit…
'26 starters Iva Sepa and Petja Drame confirmed returning under the new HC as of this week. Last big domino to fall would be Valeriia Krokhotina who was 14-1 last season and your only other regular projected starter who could return, but I’m decently confident she’ll back.
That’s awesome, thx for sharing. That’s stellar work from our new coach preventing them from moving on to Okie St. any insight on how she pulled it off?
Like me, nobody can say no to a blond with pony tail wearing a baseball cap. 
Having made friends with several European UH tennis players, while OSU has the facilities we have the city. And much better opportunities for employment at various country clubs upon graduation.
Agree 100%. Stillwater isn’t somewhere a European girl is going to get excited about and the UH degree is stronger nationwide than the OSU degree. If our players had gone, it would have been for the coach and not for the town/school and frankly I’m not surprised that they didn’t. She was incredibly hard on the team and that gets the results short-term but from the outside looking in I did not love it.
I’m really pleased that the new coach was able to keep our players and like I said I would if she did not steal out players, I want to thank Coach Kat for elevating the program back to (almost) where it should be! Even though she pumped and dumped us, she was a good hire and I don’t blame her for going back to where she played for what I’m sure was a big raise. Hopefully Coach Natalie will be able to take us to NCAAs this year. Looks like she made a very good pickup and we return our solid core!
I do think at least some of this is down to the fact that OSU’s support/expectations are to compete for a natty or at the very least make a deep run in the NCAAs. This core is without a doubt UH’s best group of players in many years, but I don’t think they’re a “deep run in the NCAAs” level of player (other than maaaaaaybe Valeriia who’s an absolute killer). These players also do genuinely like each other, so I think staying at UH and playing for a successful Slavic former player and coach who was on staff at a title contender isn’t that hard of a sell.
The 2026-27 roster is up and Valeriia is on it but she’s the only one of the four listed that we haven’t announced as returning on Instagram.