The good news for the University of Hawaii is that Petra Melounova, the most accomplished tennis player in school history, plans to return.

The hard part is finding how to get her all the way back to Manoa.

“When she will get back, I don’t know when that will be,” tennis coach Jun Hernandez said Tuesday.

With ever-changing, country-by-country restrictions on travel and who they let in during the COVID-19 era, getting Melounova from the Czech Republic and teammates Rebecca Ehn from Sweden and Lea Romain from France back here has turned into a logistical global challenge.

These days Hernandez, their coach, doubles as a travel advisor, scouring the internet daily for the latest travel bans, restrictions and quarantine rules, routing and airline prices. Tennis? That will come later, he hopes.

Nor is he alone at UH, where other coaches, including Rainbow Wahine volleyball, have their work cut out for them in getting some athletes back in time for preseason practice before the Aug. 24 opening of the fall semester.

One option calls for the three tennis players to travel together from a central meeting point to Serbia, Croatia or the United Arab Emirates, someplace outside the European Community, where they will have to be in residence for 14 days before moving on to Los Angeles. There, they would take the virus test and then, upon qualified results, come to Hawaii without the necessity of quarantining here.

“I told them to get in touch with their embassies and consulates in the various places so they know the latest situation and don’t get stuck somewhere,” Hernandez said.

Then, there is the matter of paying for some of it since the NCAA-permitted Cost of Attendance stipends UH can afford only go so far.

For Melounova, a 2019 All-American and the 2020 female recipient of the Jack Bonham Award, the school’s most prestigious scholar-athlete award, this past season was to have been her senior year. But with the NCAA-mandated cancellation of spring sports during the pandemic, she was offered the option of returning for an extended season and delaying her graduation in electrical engineering.

She talked the situation over with her family in Havlickuv Brod and told Hernandez in a recent Zoom session between competing in European tournaments that she would return, pushing graduation back to May, if necessary.

“She was smiling and so was I. For her and the team, it is a win-win situation,” Hernandez said. “With everything she has done, she is capable of doing it all again or even more. With her work ethic and determination, it is good for the team.”

Melounova became the first UH tennis player — female or male — to reach the Round of 16 in the NCAA Tournament and is a three-time Big West Conference Player of the Year. Still, Hernandez said, “She is so humble that she asked me, with the team we have coming back, if we still needed her? I told her, ‘Maybe you haven’t noticed, but every time you were our No. 1 player, you won.’ ”

Melounova’s career goal is to someday become an astronaut. These days, those kind of skills would come in handy.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.