A Big Ten championship was the last thing the Northwestern women’s tennis team expected in 1999.

The Wildcats had dropped from a 1996 Top 25 ranking to worse than 40th during the disheartening 1997 and 1998 seasons, finishing fourth and fifth in the conference, respectively.

“(Colleen) Cheng and I were disappointed with our first year,” said senior Shannon Duffy, who is one of three Cats to be a part of the team’s just-completed Big Ten three-peat for all three years. “The team didn’t work too hard and was very individualistic. There was a lot of apathy. Players wouldn’t show up. It was miserable. When we lost in the first round of the Big Ten tournament, no one cared.”

After that 1998 campaign, then-coach Lisa Fortman resigned, creating a vacancy filled by current coach Claire Pollard. And since Pollard’s arrival, the Cats have won the Big Ten championship every year. This season NU beat every Big Ten team it faced.

If there was any doubt after the first two titles, the Cats established themselves as the dominant force in the conference with this season’s victory, capping off three seasons of change and improvement.

“(1999) was a transition year,” said junior Lia Jackson, whose arrival at NU coincided with Pollard’s. “It was a new style that (the players) weren’t used to.

“Before, the girls ran the team; now Claire runs the team.”

The 1999 Big Ten title was the Cats’ first since 1986. Their national ranking has steadily improved during the past three seasons, going from 24th to 15th to ninth this year.

“Coming in sophomore year, we didn’t realize all of our potential,” Duffy said. “We were underdogs the whole year.

“That year we had fun for the first time. We got to go to movies on the road and play soccer games. We put in the energy and it paid off.”

Despite the fun, Duffy said the winning didn’t come easy.

“Claire was sort of a tyrant,” she said. “She didn’t have a lot of friends that first year. She changed and molded the team, and (eventually) we embraced her vision.”

Pollard established a simple goal for her team upon arrival, and each year the expectations get higher and the pressure gets more intense for the Cats.

“My first year, Claire said to me, ‘While you’re here we’re going to be a top-five, top-10 program,'” Jackson recalled. “When I came here, that was my goal. I came in with the mindset that we would win four Big Ten titles.”

Throughout the past three years the team has changed significantly while maintaining its dominance over the Big Ten. Katherine Nasser and Jen Lutgert graduated after last season, and Laura Guignon ended her career two years ago. All were starters for the Cats, and Nasser and Guignon both qualified for NCAA action during their time at NU.

“We lost a lot of leadership, emotional leadership,” Duffy said. “This year we have a really new team, with four new players.”

Even though the Cats have lost some of their best players, they’ve grown closer and have a better rapport now than ever before.

Duffy said the team plays best when feeding off emotion – and that spunk has paid off in the last three campaigns. Other conference teams have told the Cats that they’re the loudest squad in the Midwest.

Looking back, it may seem difficult to distinguish one title from the others. But the elder Cats have little problem making those distinctions. Duffy asserted that the first Big Ten tournament championship was the best.

“We had turned everything around,” she said. “It was physically and mentally draining. We proved to ourselves how good we could be.

“The second year was more pressure. We knew we should win but still didn’t expect it.”

So where does this year fit in?

NU went undefeated in the conference regular season for the first time in the three-year stretch, giving the Cats an air of invincibility in the conference tournament that they hadn’t experienced before.

Pollard and her players said they didn’t have any doubt this year’s tournament in Columbus, Ohio, would yield a third championship.

“We never thought we were going to lose,” Jackson said. “We were walking around Ohio State thinking that we’re good and we’re going to win. The experience has made us comfortable at the top.”