Maybe it was the argument between Northwestern women’s tennis coach Claire Pollard and Notre Dame coach Jay Louderback over a pivotal point in a singles match, one coming long after the day’s outcome had been decided.
Maybe it was the fact Wildcats sophomore Georgia Rose used three “reallys” to describe how good it felt to win the match.
Maybe it was when I looked to my left and saw University President Henry Bienen getting excited over backhand winners and service breaks.
But at some point during NU’s win over No. 2 Notre Dame on Friday, I realized the match was a really, really, really big deal.
No team in the Big Ten can touch the Cats; it’s a proven fact. NU has won eight straight conference championships and hasn’t lost to a Big Ten team since I was in high school, battling the senior slump.
Since then, NU and Notre Dame have stirred up quite the rivalry. The teams have met seven times in the last four years, with the Cats taking five.
“They’re such a good team and we’ve had such good matches over the years that we look forward to the match,” Pollard said.
It seemed like a fair amount of the campus understood the gravitas of the match as well, especially members of the athletic department’s adidas-wearing sweatpantsocracy.
Athletic Director Mark Murphy was there. So was football coach Pat Fitzgerald, and about two dozen of his players. Some wrestlers were there, TomKat, Brangelina … all the usual suspects.
And this high-profile crowd cheered at all the right spots.
When senior Alexis Prousis slammed a ball into the stands to win the first game of her and Rose’s No. 1 doubles match against Notre Dame’s Christian and Catrina Thompson, the No. 8 pair in the country, the noise in the Combe Tennis Center was equal to any Bronx cheers you might hear at some of NU’s larger facilities.
There were even the startings of a “bulls**t” chant when a close call went against the Cats.
“It really helped to have great fan support,” Pollard said. “I thought it made it really tough in here.”
This is comforting for a team that often gets overshadowed by its spring sister sports, lacrosse and softball.
Never mind the decade of conference domination. And the six trips to at least the round of 16 in the last seven NCAA tournaments. You won’t find Rose or Prousis prominently featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated on Campus, as lacrosse star Kristen Kjellman was two years ago.
While the tennis team has not had the national success of lacrosse or softball, it is still underappreciated for being one of the country’s elite programs.
This could be the year to change that.
This year’s Cats are young and getting better with each match. The same team that barely lost to Notre Dame in February had Friday’s match well in hand nearly 45 minutes into the singles portion.
While Pollard was quick to introduce a “yeah, but,” saying Notre Dame was hampered by injuries, it was still a dominating win over the country’s second-best team.
“We’ve had some tough losses to a couple of the top teams,” Rose said. “So it’s good to get this win.”
