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enior Stephanie Yakoff — the first-ever Harvard women’s tennis player to win a match in the singles main draw of the NCAA Individual Championships — will transfer to the University of Michigan, she confirmed to The Crimson on Thursday evening.
The Wolverines qualified for the Final Four of the women’s 2025 Team NCAA Championships and are multiple-time reigning Big Ten Champions, having won the conference’s regular-season title the past four years and four of the league’s last five tournaments.
“The culture there is amazing,” Yakoff said. “The school spirit is amazing; they won the Big Ten many times, and they made the semifinals at NCAAs last year. I think it would be awesome to be able to play for a chance at the NCAA title, and being able to compete in the Big Ten is a whole different level of competition.”
Particularly, the senior said the opportunity to attend a Michigan home football game while on her recruiting trip helped sway her decision.
“I was able to go to the Michigan versus Penn State football game, which was a huge culture shock considering it’s like a 110,000-person stadium,” she explained. “So, yeah, it’ll be a pretty big culture shock, but I’m very excited for it. It’ll be cool to compete in a different conference, and the Big Ten is very, very strong and a high level of competition.”
Yakoff’s graduate transfer is part of a larger trend of similar moves among Harvard student-athletes amidst recent changes to the NCAA’s eligibility rules. In June, the Division I Cabinet unanimously voted to institute an age-based five-year eligibility window.
The change gives Ivy League student-athletes — previously limited to four years of eligibility at their schools — the opportunity to graduate with a degree before transferring to a Power Four school without having to graduate early or redshirt.
“I took the official visit last week, and I talked to the coaches a little bit when recruiting before college, and I always thought that it was a great mix of academics and tennis,” Yakoff said. “That was one of the biggest things that stuck out. Ross is also a great business school, and I knew a bunch of the girls on the team beforehand who are all just amazing people.”
After graduating from Harvard in the spring, Yakoff – who has a concentration in government on the public policy track – will enroll in a Master of Business Management program at Ross Business School while competing in her fifth year of collegiate tennis.
“I was actually leaning more towards law in my undergrad, and then this business and fifth-year option was a bit of a blessing in disguise,” Yakoff explained. “I wanted to do something a little more different than my undergrad degree just to get some more skills.”
Yakoff recognized the role that her time in Cambridge has played in preparing her to excel in a prestigious program both athletically and academically.
“I think Harvard prepared me very well,” she said. “I compare it to Michigan pretty closely, just in terms of that balance between the academics and the tennis. Our schedules might look a little different, but I would say that Harvard has been great preparation, especially considering that I’ve been playing here for four years now.”
Yakoff has had an illustrious career in her sport and is prepared to continue it at a national powerhouse. Before enrolling at Harvard, the Fort Lee, N.J., native was ranked as high as fifth in her 2023 high school graduating class on TennisRecruiting.net and was named the 2022-23 USA TODAY HSSA Girls Tennis Player of the Year, one of the most prestigious awards given out to high school tennis players nationally. She also won the Orange Bowl in 2019.
For Yakoff, tennis excellence was basically predestined. Her grandmother pushed for her to be named after tennis legend Steffi Graf, and her brother, who also played collegiate tennis, was named after Stan Wawrinka.
Yakoff’s parents helped inspire her strong focus on both academics and athletics.
“I was always taught to balance the tennis and academic aspect,” she explained.
Watching her brother balance tennis and school helped inspire and guide Yakoff as she made her own decisions on where to attend college.
“I followed a bit in the footsteps of my brother,” she said. “I played high school tennis like he did. He went to a very technical school and got a bunch of engineering degrees.”
“I had to one up him somehow,” she joked. “So I ended up going to Harvard.”
She quickly adjusted to the collegiate level with the Crimson, earning Second-Team All-Ivy honors in both singles and doubles as a freshman. In her sophomore year, Yakoff was integral to Harvard’s conference championship-winning 7-0 record in the Ivy League and earned Second-Team All-Ivy honors in singles and First-Team All-Ivy in doubles.
Alongside fellow senior Kavya Karra, Yakoff also won the ITA New England Regional doubles championship as a sophomore, securing an automatic bid to the 2024 NCAA doubles tournament. The pair reclaimed their title this season.
The Yakoff-Karra duo continued their success into their junior year, reaching a career-high national ranking of No. 40.
“I’m gonna miss all my teammates,” Yakoff said. “I’ll miss playing doubles with Kavya, and I guess it’ll be different playing for a new team for one year, but I’m still definitely excited for that.”
As a singles player, Yakoff also had great success during her junior year. After winning six consecutive matches without dropping a set, she took home the ITA New England Regional singles title in October 2025.
Then, the next month, she defeated No. 23 Annabelle Xu — a University of Virginia player — at the NCAA Individual Championships. In doing so, Yakoff became Harvard’s first player to win a match in the NCAA singles draw.
So far in her senior year, Yakoff has been off to a strong start at singles. In the ITA All-American Championships, she advanced to the Sweet 16 — downing multiple top-ranked opponents in the process — becoming the first Crimson player to compete in the main draw of the event.
“Stephanie put in a lot of work this summer, and it’s paying off with a strong start to her senior year,” Harvard head coach Traci Green wrote after Yakoff’s successful run in the All-American Championships. “She competed hard, and that’s what I’m most proud of.”
In November, Yakoff will compete in the NCAA Championships in both singles and doubles, alongside Karra in the latter. Then, she will look ahead toward her final dual season as a Crimson tennis player. Yakoff was clear that the Harvard team has high hopes for the upcoming spring season.
“The goal is always going to be to win Ivies and do as well as we can at NCAAs,” she said. “Looking towards every match, we have a bunch of top opponents like Pepperdine, Baylor, Kentucky; schools that are in the SEC and Big West and other competitive conferences, schools that we faced last year as well.”
“It will be important to take it match by match, and hopefully we can get another Ivy win,” the senior added.
“I love representing Harvard, and it’s an experience that I’ll never forget,” she said.
Although Yakoff still has a year-and-a-half of collegiate tennis remaining, she plans to continue pursuing competitive tennis after her collegiate eligibility is exhausted.
“Ideally, I would like to play on the pro tour the first few years out of college,” Yakoff explained.
Yakoff said she would continue playing both singles and doubles at the professional level. Then, after eventually concluding her tennis career, she aspires to attend graduate school.
—Staff writer Samuel S. Rudvasky can be reached at [email protected].
