Vanderbilt named Aleke Tsoubanos as women’s tennis head coach in July 2020, the eighth head coach in program history. A Vanderbilt alumna and Vanderbilt Athletics Hall of Fame inductee, she was a three-time All-American as a student-athlete and served as a longtime assistant coach under Geoff Macdonald.
Tsoubanos recorded her 100th victory as Vanderbilt head coach during the 2025–26 campaign, a fitting milestone for a historic season in which Sophia Webster and Célia-Belle Mohr became the program’s first NCAA Doubles Championship finalists, a program-record five student-athletes secured berths into the singles and doubles NCAA Championships and the Commodores knocked off the nation’s No. 1 team for the first time since 2018. The team’s 22 dual match wins were also the most during Tsoubanos’ time as head coach.
Vanderbilt reached the NCAA Tournament in each of Tsoubanos’ first six seasons as head coach, extending the program’s overall streak of 31 consecutive tournament appearances. The Commodores have advanced to at least the second round every season under Tsoubanos, including three Super Regional appearances.
She’s helped Commodores earn four first-team All-America honors in singles, with four doubles teams also earning that distinction. Both lists include Mohr, who became the program’s first six-time first-team All-American under Tsoubanos. Her teams have also amassed 10 All-SEC honors, including six first-team selections.
Committed to developing student-athletes on and off the court, she also mentored three-time SEC Women’s Tennis Community Service Team honoree Sonya Macavei and first-team Academic All-American Bridget Stammel, a first-team All-SEC honoree.
In all, Vanderbilt has produced at least six ITA Scholar-Athletes in each of Tsoubanos’ first six seasons, including a program-record eight honorees apiece in 2025 and 2026.
As an assistant coach from 2008–20, Tsoubanos helped women’s tennis win Vanderbilt’s third national championship across all team sports and played an essential role in bringing some of the nation’s top recruiting classes to the Music City. From 2015–2018, she helped guide Vanderbilt to three SEC Tournament titles, back-to-back regular-season titles in 2017 and 2018, four consecutive trips to the Final Four, and national championship appearances in 2015 and 2018. The 2015 national championship highlighted the run, as Vanderbilt upset top-seeded USC in the semifinals and defeated UCLA in the final.
Across the four-year run, Vanderbilt went 99-22 while finishing no lower than second in the conference and fifth in the nation. Since Tsoubanos joined the coaching staff in 2008, the Commodores have never finished outside the top 30 in the final national rankings.
Tsoubanos was a three-time ITA Ohio Valley Region Assistant Coach of the Year honoree and also earned the ITA National Assistant Coach of the Year Award in 2015.
As a student-athlete, the St. Louis native was a three-time ITA All-American (2002–04), first-team All-NCAA selection and first-team All-SEC selection in both singles and doubles. She was the first player to win the ITA All-American Riviera doubles championship in back-to-back years with different partners. She also earned All-SEC Academic Team accolades.
Inducted into the Vanderbilt Hall of Fame in 2015, Tsoubanos still holds four school records. In 2004, she partnered with Kelly Schmandt to win 15 consecutive doubles matches, and she owns the highest career doubles winning percentage (82 percent). She also has the most career doubles victories (119) and a single-season record 32 doubles victories with Sarah Riske (2003) and Schmandt (2004). She was part of teams that reached three Elite Eights, two Final Fours, and played for the national championship in 2000.
Before returning to her alma mater as a coach, Tsoubanos enjoyed success in the professional ranks. She won four professional doubles titles, reached 23 semifinals and was ranked as high as No. 126 on the International Tennis Federation circuit.
Tsoubanos also played World Team Tennis for her hometown St. Louis Aces, scoring doubles wins over players like Anna Kournikova and Meghann Shaughnessy. In 2024, the former Missouri high school state singles champion and three-time finalist at Parkway Central High School was inducted into the St. Louis Tennis Hall of Fame, honoring her lifetime in the sport.