Three Men's Tennis Players Earn Spot in Individual Singles Championships

CHICAGO -- The University of Chicago will send three student-athletes to represent the men's tennis program at the NCAA DIII Individual National Championships in Chattanooga, Tennessee from May 23-26. The full list of individuals competing for the National Championship at the end of the month can be found

HERE.

Alexander Ekstrand earns a spot in the 2026 NCAA Singles National Championships after entering the field as the #25 player in NCAA Division III. The 2-time 1st-Team All-UAA selection enters the NCAA Tournament with a 16-3 singles record. The sophomore has tallied five wins over nationally-ranked opponents and a 6-2 record against regionally-ranked foes, including a single top-20 win over the #18 ranked player from Tufts. Ekstrand will be making his second consecutive NCAA Championship appearance after falling to Noah Laber from Middlebury in the opening round of the tournament.

Emil Grantcharov also earned a spot in the singles tournament as the #8 ranked singles player in NCAA Division III. The 4-time All-UAA honoree will enter the NCAA Tournament with a 15-7 record in singles. Grantcharov has tallied a record of 6-2 against nationally-ranked opponents this season, including wins over four of the top 12 players in the country after taking down the #7 player from Denison, the #8 player from Carnegie Mellon, the #11 player from Pomona-Pitzer, and the #12 player from Emory. Grantcharov will be making his third career appearance in the Individual Singles National Championships, but he has yet to win a match in the tournament with a pair of three-set losses to Eli Mizerski from George Fox in 2024 and Jordan Theron from Sewanee in 2025.

Shrikeshav Murugesan rounds out the UChicago trio to earn a spot in the 2026 NCAA Singles National Championships as the #15 ranked player in NCAA Division III. The 1st-Team All-UAA selection enters the NCAA Tournament with a record of 11-5 in singles. Murugesan has tallied a trio of nationally-ranked victories, and he has recorded a 5-4 record against regionally-ranked foes, including wins over the #3 player from Denison and the #22 palyer from Case Western Reserve. Murugesan will be making his first-ever National Championship appearance after transferring to UChicago from Penn State for this season.

The three individual singles national qualifiers for the Maroons are the most in school history, and UChicago joins Denison as the only teams in the past five years to have three individuals selected to the individual national championships. It also marks the 13th consecutive year that UChicago has had a singles player qualify for the individual national championships, and it marks the seventh time in the last nine years that the Maroons have had multiple singles players qualify. The UChicago trio will look to become the first singles players for the Maroons to win a match in the Individual National Championships since Christian Alshon in 2022. Both Ekstrand and Grantcharov fell in three-set thrillers in the opening round of the 2025 championships.

The draw for the individual championships will be done by the men's tennis committee during the week leading up to the individual championships, and it will be released no earlier than 12 PM CT on Saturday, May 22.