CMS Assistant Coach Angela Kulikov Earns Wild Card Selection for US Open Doubles Championship

CLAREMONT, Calif. - For most of the country, the biggest news when the U.S. Open announced its wild card selections for the women's doubles championship this weekend was that Serena and Venus Williams would be competing in New York for the ninth time.

But in CMS community, the announcement was a big moment for a different reason, as current assistant coach Angela Kulikov (and her partner Sophie Chang) were one of the seven selections as well. Athena head coach David Schwarz also serves as Kulikov's coach.

Kulikov joined the CMS coaching staff last year and helped guide the Athenas to the 2022 national championship, a 5-1 win over Chicago. Her influence in doubles was particularly evident, as she frequently coached the No. 1 doubles team of Nikolina Batoshvili and Alisha Chulani in matches.

Batoshvili and Chulani were paired together as the No. 3 team on CMS in March, and by the time the NCAA Championships rolled around in May, they were the No. 1 seed in the nation. The duo also went 7-0 in the postseason, including a key tiebreaker win over Pomona-Pitzer in the SCIAC Championship (a 5-4 Athena victory). 

Earlier this summer, Kulikov and Chang pulled off a big victory at the Hamburg European Open, which helped them get a spot in the US Open. The duo, ranked just outside the top 100 at the time, earned their first touranment win by upsetting the No. 3 seed of Miyu Kato of Japan and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 6-3, 4-6, 10-6. 

Kulikov and Chang will open play at the US Open on Wednesday with an opening round back against Kamilla Rakhimova and Natela Dzalamidze of Georgia. A possible meeting with the Williams sisters? Well, that would be a pretty big story, since they are on opposite sides of the draw and would only be able to meet for the US Open title.