Micaela Ponce earns Third-Team NAIA All-America honors

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The NAIA released its 2026 NAIA Women's Tennis All-America teams on Thursday, and Loyola Wolf Pack senior Micaela Ponce has been selected as an NAIA Third-Team All-American for the second time in her career. 

Ponce, a senior from Quito, Ecuador, spent this season playing every singles match and all but one doubles match on the No. 1 court. She posted a 5-9 record in singles, including 3-2 in conference matches to help Loyola clinch a top-2 seed in the conference tournament. She also went 4-4 with Presha Shanthamoorthi in doubles and 5-3 alongside Adele Fereres, posting a 9-7 record against some of the top doubles teams in the NAIA. 

With Ponce at the top of the lineup, the Wolf Pack put together a 10-8 overall record this season, making the quarterfinals of the NAIA National Championship tournament for the third year in a row. The Pack posted double-digit wins and qualified for the national tournament in all four years of Ponce's tenure with the team. 


She spent much of the year in the national ITA rankings in singles, reaching a ranking as high as No. 45 in March. She fell out of the final singles srankings, but appeared twice on the doubles rankings list. In the final ITA rankings, she and Shanthamoorthi were the No. 20-ranked doubles team, while she and Fereres stayed inside the top 50 with a ranking of No. 47 for their efforts earlier in the season. 

At the end of her career, Ponce's name is near the top of all the career wins lists in the Wolf Pack record book. She ranks third in Wolf Pack history in singles wins with an overall singles record of 39-31, including fall and spring matches. She also ranks second in doubles victories with a 56-27 overall mark. Finally, she was a part of two of the top three doubles teams in career victories at Loyola, going 27-12 with Ariana Salgueiro-Estela from 2022-24 and 20-5 with Fereres over the past two seasons. 

Ponce is making her second straight appearance on the NAIA All-America Teams after also earning Third-Team honors last season. She joins Lucy Carpenter as the only Wolf Pack tennis players to earn multiple NAIA All-American accolades.

[Full NAIA Women's Tennis All Americans list]

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