The Northwestern women’s tennis program made history over the weekend, becoming the first Big Ten team ever to win the ITA National Indoors Championships doubles title.
The win by the nation’s No. 6 doubles tandem of sophomore Cristelle Grier and senior Jessica Rush (10-0) marks the first national title for NU in any sport since golfer Luke Donald won the 1999 NCAA individual championship.
“This championship was good for the league,” NU coach Claire Pollard said. “But more importantly it is the first national championship for the school in a long time.”
The No. 2-seeded Grier and Rush knocked off UCLA’s Jackie Carleton and Lauren Fisher 8-6 in the final match on Saturday at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Mich. The tournament is the biggest of the fall season and second only to the NCAA championships in the spring.
The pair qualified for the culminating tournament of the fall season by virtue of its ITA Midwest Championships title on Oct. 27 in Kalamazoo, Mich.
The ITA National Indoors Championships doubles semifinal, played earlier in the afternoon on Nov. 8, was a partial rematch of the singles semifinal earlier in the day, in which the No. 3-seeded Grier fell 6-3, 5-7, 7-6 (4) to defending champion No. 2 seed Agata Cioroch of Georgia.
Grier and Cioroch met later in the day with their doubles partners at their side, with Grier taking the upper hand this time in the defeat of Cioroch and Shadisha Robinson 8-4. All in all, Grier and Cioroch played against each other in three different matches Saturday.
Pollard said she did not believe Grier’s singles loss had anything to do with the amount of matches she competed in.
“It was a match nobody deserved to lose,” Pollard said. “Unfortunately, we came up on the losing end this time.
“But it shows Cristelle’s tremendous class and character to come through and be ready for her doubles match.”
But Grier and Rush weren’t the only Cats who had success over the weekend.
Seven other players from the NU squad competed at the Badger Blast in Madison, Wis. on Nov. 8-9. Although the team was able to manage a split with Iowa on Day One, it did not find more success in later matches against Wisconsin.
After dropping their first match to Wisconsin, the Cats rallied off three wins in a row against the Badgers to end competition on Saturday.
NU’s Connie Chiang was the top player of the day for the Cats, as she went 3-0 in her matches and was half of the only doubles victory against the Hawkeyes.
On the tournament’s second day, the Cats finished with six victories to their name out of nine matches against Wisconsin. Although NU again only had one win in the doubles tournament, it dominated the field in singles, winning five of the seven matches they played. Both events bring to a close the fall season for the Cats.
“Although the competition phase is over, there is still a lot of work to be done until our first meet in January,” Pollard said.
