While some Northwestern teams are known for oscillating between a guaranteed winning season and barely making .500 by the seventh week, the NU women’s tennis team has quietly held a steady pace towards clinching an eighth straight Big Ten title.

Just one month and eight matches are standing between the Cats and their attempt at another conference championship, but for coach Claire Pollard, the coming weeks are no different from the rest of the season.

“I don’t think they’re any more important than anything else we’ve done so far this year,” Pollard said. “You have to take the season week by week, the fact that we’ve had such a great start helps but every week’s important.”

Taking the one-week-at-a-time approach seems to be a beneficial strategy. The Cats enter the spring with an overall record of 11-3 and 3-0 in the Big Ten, an almost identical record to last year’s 13-2 and 3-0 in conference play.

With the exception of graduated seniors, a missing red-shoed Audra Cohen and the addition of freshman standout Georgia Rose, not all that much has changed in this year’s run for a Big Ten title. Senior Cristelle Grier and junior Alexis Prousis continue their dominating reign, and the rest of the team is anything but a supporting cast, posting impressive statistics in doubles and singles.

If history is any indication of things to come, then this year’s team should have no problem with their upcoming schedule.

But as anyone who filled out an NCAA men’s basketball bracket this year knows, collegiate athletics can be as fickle as the weather in Evanston – one day you’re basking in the sun while the next you’re googling George Mason and wondering where that $50 will come from.

So what is it that keeps this particular team on such a steady winning streak?

It could have something to do with the way they approach the game.

“I don’t think it matters what you’ve done,” Pollard said. “It matters what you do that day. It’s another opportunity to do better and that’s really what matters.”

For the matches against the Hoosiers this Saturday and Penn State on Sunday, Pollard seems much less concerned with how the team has fared against them in the past and is more concerned with parts of the game that usually go overlooked.

“We don’t really measure off by wins and loses,” Pollard said. “There are a lot of other things we measure by. It’s important that we enjoy this experience for one.”

Pollard said she pays attention to improvement and attitude as much as how the team is playing overall. She also said how much the girls are having fun with the game and being supportive of one another play a large part as well.

“Being a great teammate and bringing something to the program is just as important,” Pollard said. “There are just so many different things that go unnoticed but still contribute to the program.”

So while the Cats might be on the road to a possible eighth-straight Big Ten Championship title, the team probably won’t be thinking about it all that much until they are actually in Champaign, Ill., at the end of April.

For now, the team will take it one game at a time and focus on what lies directly in front of it.

Reach Diane Yamazaki at [email protected].