Jackie Jenkins was all alone on the court.
Facing Wisconsin’s Stefan Reist in April, the Northwestern men’s tennis freshman had lost 10 straight matches and had the weight of the team’s match on the strings of his racket.
Coach Paul Torricelli sat down with Jenkins before the match and reassured him that other young, successful NU players in the past had gone through the same struggles. The dual came down to the wire, tied at three.
Then Jenkins stepped up, rallying back from a first-set tiebreak loss to beat Reist and win the road match.
His gutty performance was indicative of the Wildcats’ improvement and maturity as the year progressed. NU finished the season 11-12 and 5-7 in the Big Ten.
“My goals changed a little this season,” Torricelli said. “I was more patient and preached improvement. It took the pressure off.
“When I saw improvement from this team in the spring, it made it a very enjoyable year for me.”
The season started on a sour note — the transfer of junior Derrick Nguyen, who had the team’s second best singles record last year. He decided to leave the program without citing a destination.
The loss crippled the Cats, who had already lost their top three players to graduation from last season’s 11-13 team.
“It was a blow,” Torricelli said. “It was already going to be a rebuilding year with a young team returning. All of a sudden, it went from a rebuilding year to a survival year.”
The Cats were left with just one upperclassman, Brad Erickson, to play at an unfamiliar No. 1 spot. Joost Hol and Jamie Sahara had to step up and make immediate impacts as the now-experienced sophomores.
“We were trying to learn too,” Erickson said. “We were heading into the dark.”
To fill in the holes of the departures, three freshmen — Jenkins, Josh Axler and Russell Bennett — entered the program.
And Torricelli had no other choice than to throw them immediately into the mix.
“If you’re a freshman in college tennis, you’re going to play,” Torricelli said. “We sell them on that here. They learn by trial and error in competition.”
It was mostly error early on for the Cats, as the freshmen trio struggled.
But NU rode Erickson and Hol’s wave from the get-go. Erickson made it to the finals of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association Midwest regionals before losing, and Hol advanced to the qualifying rounds of the ITA All-American championships before bowing out.
“The wins boosted me,” Erickson said. “I had some good results and I felt like I could play with the top players in the region.”
Torricelli said his team meshed right away.
“The work ethic and chemistry was good from day one,” Torricelli said. “We just focused on improvement and making the NCAA tournament. And the freshmen got out some of their jitters.”
The winter proved to be a difficult season for the Cats, as they hovered around .500. NU couldn’t string wins together and never had a breakthrough victory.
But Hol and Erickson gave NU the needed boost to stay in the hunt for the NCAAs.
As the Cats reached the end of the regular season, the freshmen stepped up to help NU to victories at Iowa and Wisconsin. Jenkins and Axler pulled off match-clinching victories that gave NU momentum heading into the Big Ten championships.
A 4-3 squeaker against Iowa in Round 1 of the tournament resulted from the Cats’ sweep in doubles. Erickson and Hol continued their tear at No. 1 doubles, winning seven straight matches heading into NCAAs.
“We just tried to play level and keep our heads on straight,” Erickson said. “We didn’t get too far up or too far down.”
With a loss to Minnesota in the second round of Big Tens, the Cats didn’t expect to play another dual match.
But the team received a pleasant surprise when it was selected to the NCAA tournament — only to face No. 1 Stanford in the first round. And when the Cardinal swept the Cats 4-0, their season came to a finish.
“The freshmen were really the ones that got us to Stanford,” Erickson said. “They won some tough Big Ten matches when it would have been very easy for them to pack it in.”
Hol and Erickson finished the year 21-8 in doubles. Erickson said the Cats need to perform better early in the season to avoid a team like Stanford in the NCAAs.
But in the end, what once looked to be a headache of a season turned into a delightful surprise for the youthful Cats.
“We gained experience this year and got better as the year went on,” Torricelli said. “We now have incentives for next year. Our goal is to return to NCAAs. It’s a carrot dangling, so to speak.”
