Mariana Cobra took over as Idaho’s head women’s tennis coach prior to the 2014-15 season.
In her first two seasons she has coached the Vandals to back-to-back Big Sky championships and their third consecutive NCAA Tournament.
The Vandals recorded 19 wins in 2016, the most since the 2014 season. Idaho earned the No. 3 seed in the Big Sky Tournament, finishing the conference season with a 9-2 record. Idaho defeated Eastern Washington, Sacramento State and Northern Arizona to claim the conference title. The Vandals earned four postseason honors, including freshman Marianna Petrei as the conference’s Most Valuable Player.
Idaho went 15-9, in her first season, as the program return to the Big Sky Conference. The Vandals broke Sacramento State’s 13-year run as conference champions, winning 4-3 in the championship match. With her Cobra’s help Idaho earned four individual all-conference honors. Galina Bykova also was awarded the conference’s Player of the Year.
Cobra was the head women’s tennis coach at Northern Iowa for the 2012-13 season and coached Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year Phoebe Walker that season.
Prior to her appointment at UNI, Cobra was the assistant men’s and women’s tennis coach at Case Western Reserve University in 2011-12 and the assistant women’s tennis coach at Middle Tennessee State University for the 2010-11 season. At Case Western Reserve University, Cobra helped the men’s team to a No. 17 national ranking in the ITA Division III polls, the best in the program’s history.
Cobra played collegiality at Northern Iowa and was a three-time ITA Scholar-Athlete and a two-time MVC Scholar Athlete. She posted a 65-28 (.698) career singles record to rank third in school history in career winning percentage. After graduating from UNI in 2008, Cobra served as a graduate assistant for the Panthers and earned her master’s degree in 2010 in sport psychology.
Cobra took over the Vandal squad that won the program’s first conference championship and reached its first NCAA tournament in 2014 after going 19-6 and winning the WAC tournament.
