While other schools get ready for the 2025 NCAA National Championships, Florida is wasting no time in making changes to bounce back from its disappointing 2025 campaign.
The Gators brought in two transfers, signed an associate head coach and had two players depart from the program since March 15. Behind first-year head coach Per Nilsson, the Gators finished the spring season 9-14. UF looks to reshape its roster to avoid consecutive losing seasons for the first time in program history.
New Associate Head Coach
On March 15, Florida announced Axel Damiens as their new associate head coach.
Damiens served as associate head coach for the South Carolina’s women’s tennis program. During his tenure, he helped the program to three-consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances.
The former Gamecock will be crucial to improving the Gators’ recruitment. Damiens helped South Carolina to back-to-back top-10 recruiting classes.
Last recruitment cycle, Florida brought in three freshmen who struggled throughout their first season. Nikola Daubnerova was out for a significant portion of the season due to injury, Noémi Oliveras went 1-11 against SEC opponents in singles and Talia Neilson-Gatenby, who was ranked going into her freshman season, failed to make another appearance on the ITA’s list.
Prior to his time at South Carolina, Damiens was part of the coaching staff for Florida State and the University of Pennsylvania women’s teams and Princeton men’s team.
Damiens’ father, Christophe, was an all-American at Mississippi State, where he was teammates with Nilsson.
New Arrivals
Two transfers are set to join the program in the early offseason.
Former Florida International University Panther Valery Gynina signed with UF on March 15.
In her freshman season in 2024, the Moscow native was named Conference USA Freshman and Rookie of the Year. She registered a 14-4 singles record and a 9-8 doubles record while making appearances on all the courts.
Gynina continued her dominance in her sophomore year. After going 19-4 in singles on court three and 20-7 on courts two and three in doubles, she was named to the 2025 First Team All-CUSA for singles and doubles. In the postseason, Gynina was named the 2025 Singles Player of the CUSA Championship and was part of the championship’s doubles team.
The rising junior has played the Gators twice in her career. In 2024, she fell on court three to rising senior Rachel Gailis. Last season, in the ITA Kickoff Weekend, Gynina defeated rising sophomore Neilson-Gatenby on court three 1-6, 6-2, 6-4. She holds a record of 0-2 in doubles play against Florida.
Per Nilsson will look for the All-CUSA First Team member to be a consistent force for the team alongside Gailis.
Two days later, tennis insider Parsa Nemati announced graduate student India Houghton verbally committed to UF. Houhgton spent her first three seasons with Stanford, and after a semester in the pro circuit, she decided to transfer to Florida.
If Houghton signs with the Gators, she will bring experience to the young team.
Ranked No. 2 nationally in the class of 2020, the Tiburon, California, native was a Pac-12 Champion and two time Pac-12 Tournament Champion at Stanford. Overall, Houghton has a 39-15 record in singles on courts five and six along with a 20-10 doubles record on court two.
Gynina and Houghton’s experience can help Florida make a deeper postseason run and play an important role in mentoring the four rising-sophomores on the team.
Saying Goodbye
The Gators are also on track to see two of their former players transfer out of the programs.
On March 15, rising junior Qavia Lopez announced on Instagram that she is departing Florida for the University of Miami. Lopez was the No. 1 recruit from the class of 2023 and did not make an appearance during her sophomore spring season for an undisclosed reason.
Lopez had an impressive freshman year where she was named to the SEC All-Freshman Team and was the first player in program history to be named SEC Freshman of the Week three times. As a Gator, Lopez went 23-11 in singles and 24-14 in doubles.
Prior to UF, the South Florida native appeared in the 2022 Wimbledon Junior Championships and the Junior Australian Open.
On March 18, Nemati announced that UF rising sophomore Neilson-Gatenby verbally committed to Clemson after entering the transfer portal.
Neilson-Gatenby entered her freshman season with high expectations. She was No. 8 in the ITA’s Newcomer ranks and was No. 122 in the ITA preseason singles rankings. In 2022, she qualified for the Wimbledon Junior Championships, where she made the second round.
The Loughborough, England, struggled in her freshman year at Florida, where she finished 11-19 in singles on court three and 8-16 in doubles.
The two departures tarnishes Florida’s depth, but bringing in the two aforementioned transfers help to mitigate the impact.
With the offseason just starting, the Gators are expected to be active in the portal and continue to retool their roster.
Contact Jeffrey Serber at Jserber@alligator.org. Follow him on X @JeffreySerber.
Jeffrey is the Summer 2025 women's tennis beat reporter and a second-year journalism sports & media major. In his free time, he enjoys hanging out with friends and family, and rooting for the Miami sports teams.
