Tennis has always been an international game. In the last few decades, American collegiate tennis has embraced the growing trend of internationalism, with 20 of the top 30 men’s singles players coming from overseas to compete at the Division I level.
Northwestern coach Paul Torricelli have been an exception to this rule.
“In my first 20 years I only had 11 foreign players,” Torricelli said. “More recently I have begun to recruit more overseas.”
Torricelli’s foreign players now equal his American players. The four international Wildcats Torricelli has assembled are freshman Alexey Evstratenkov of Russia, sophomore Juan Gomez of Mexico, and juniors Christian Tempke of Germany and Willy Lock of Peru.
Many of the players chose NU because of its strong mix of academics and athletics.
“I was being recruited by the Minnesota coach and the George Washington coach,” Evstratenkov said. “But I think (NU) is a better school.”
Because of the far-flung locations of potential star players, coaches are now using the Internet and old-fashioned word-of-mouth more often.
Torricelli had the chance to see Evstratenkov play in a tournament in Belgium, but he was forced to go on scouting reports about Gomez’s play.
“In all cases you are going on a combination of reports and statistics,” Torricelli said. “In a perfect world, every coach would like to see a player play a lot, but I have to hold my breath a bit.”
When the players get to NU, they generally don’t feel any more out of place than most freshmen do when arriving in Evanston. Most players have picked up the American way of life and have no problems adjusting to life in a new country.
“I would say we have seven countries represented on this team,” Torricelli said. “In addition to the obvious four, Adam (Schaechterle) is from Wisconsin, Marc (Dwyer) is from Georgia, and Andrew (Hoffman) is from Nebraska. Those are all foreign countries to me.”
Once the players have acclimated to NU, the diversity of the team brings a great sense of belonging, because no one on the team is originally from the state of Illinois.
It also fosters a new way to joke among each other about where they come from.
“People still make fun of certain words or phrases I use,” Evstratenkov said. “But because we have so many international players we all try to help each other out.”
Players have found things in common with their teammates once they get to know them.
“Juan and I both speak Spanish,” Lock said. “We played together a lot during the fall and there was a lot of Spanish spoken on the court.”
This weekend, the Cats (9-7, 3-2 Big Ten) host No. 40 Minnesota (9-9, 3-1) on Saturday and Iowa (5-8, 0-4) on Sunday. Both matches start at noon.
“This is one of the most important weekends of our season,” Lock said. “We need to win these matches and I think it will be a good weekend.”
A lot of the Cats’ success in their last five dual matches of the year will rest on the condition of junior Matt Christian’s arm. According to Torricelli, Christian’s injury has hurt his serving game, but that hasn’t stopped his desire to compete.
“He’s a gutsy guy,” Torricelli said. “He’d go out there with one arm if he had to.”
Stepping up in Christian’s place has been Evstratenkov, who won his last match against Indiana, more proof that Torricelli’s new-found faith in international recruiting is working.
“It was something we needed to do more of,” Torricelli said. “I think it has been well worth it, they are very good guys, very good players and very good students.”
Reach Brian Regan at [email protected].
