The Iona men’s and women’s tennis programs were defunct for two decades. After 23 years, the Gaels return to the court for the 2026-27 season with head coach Katia Bogomolova at the helm.
Building a team from nothing was no easy task for the former Miami Hurricane. Bogomolova led Miami to two Big East Championships while playing at the top singles and doubles positions, and began her college career at a youthful 16-years-old. As an assistant coach, she helped turn Fordham women’s tennis into a perennial A-10 contender. But this was a different type of task for the New Rochelle, New York native. Here, she was in very new territory.
“My first step was [figuring out] the key areas of what I need to focus on,” Bogomolova said. “So obviously you need a schedule. Obviously, you need an assistant coach — but nothing happens unless you have players.”
“I knew our courts were going to go into renovations. I knew we needed uniforms. I knew we needed to get all the platforms in order, like tennis recruiting, UTR, all of the different segments together, but nothing would matter, unless I have players… the first challenge was to get the first yes.”
Well, she got both of her first yes’s at the same showcase down in Florida. On the women’s side, her first yes was freshman Alexis Gard from Bonney Lake, Washington out of IMG Academy. On the men’s side, it was freshman Mark Taviloglu, who Bogomolova actually had known previously from her time as a head tennis pro in New York.
“He didn’t know and I didn’t know that we’d be at the same showcase,” Bogomolova said. “He stood in front of me and said his name and I looked up and I said ‘Mark, what are you doing here?’. He’s like ‘I want to come back to New York and I want to play for you’ … Brought him to New York and three days later, he signed the papers.”
Another player that believed in Bogomolova’s vision was Pennsylvania Western transfer, junior Garance Laforet, coming from the DII school and originating from Cessy, France.
“We’re building something new,” Laforet said. “It was a risk because it could be good, but it also could be bad, so I was like ‘I have to take this risk, I need to be there, I have to be part of this, but, it’s also a risk. I was a little bit scarier.”
The Gaels programs were brought back to life in part because of Iona University’s acquisition of Concordia College in Bronxville, New York in 2021. Five years later, the facilities are ready to be used.
“[Concordia] came with three indoor courts that recently got renovated in August, and we have outdoor courts that are being renovated,” Bogomolova said. “… They were in terrible shape. We are hopeful that [the outdoor courts] will be done by fall of ‘27.”
Along with finding players and securing facilities, another major step for Bogomolova was building a schedule — a major challenge for a new program.
“Nobody really wanted to play us,” Bogomolova said. “We didn’t have a foot print, they didn’t know what UTR players I had. From a recruiting perspective, that was hard, because they would ask me how many players I had… They would say ‘I don’t really know if you’re gonna make it happen.’”
Well, it’s happening, as the Gaels have built up a roster and a schedule. The women’s squad has started out the season 2-1 while the men are 2-3 with fall duels wrapped up.
