In 24 of her 25 seasons as Northwestern’s women’s tennis head coach, Claire Pollard has led her program to the NCAA Tournament. The fall season, the first component of year 26, is now complete.
Last season, the Wildcats reached the NCAA Tournament and fell in a 4-3 first-round nailbiter to Arizona State. The 2024-25 season marks a new chapter for the program.
Maria Shusharina, a unanimous All-Big Ten Team selection as NU’s No. 1 singles player, graduated after last season. Pollard’s No. 1 doubles team — Justine Leong and Christina Hand — have also exhausted their eligibility.
Entering the fall season, Pollard said she knew the season would be different with the loss of the three program cornerstones, but she took it in a positive light.
“(There was) a lot of optimism and anticipation of a new beginning and a new start, and I think that was exciting and motivating,” Pollard said. “As sad as it was to lose three unbelievable players, the excitement and energy of new players is always good for a team.”
At the fall season’s conclusion, Pollard sat down with The Daily to look back on the past few months and glimpse at the future of the approaching dual season. Here are five takeaways from the conversation with the Big Ten’s second-most winningest coach.
1. The decision-making that goes into the fall season is complex
While the dual season has a set schedule, it is up to the coaching staff to decide each time and place a player will play in fall competition.
“If you were in our office and you listened to the amount of time that we put into deciding who was going where, you might be questioning our sanity,” Pollard said.
The individual NCAA Tournament was moved to the fall this year after previously being held in the spring, which Pollard said put a new dimension in scheduling considerations for her and assistant coaches Ellyse Hamlin and Georgia Munns.
A variety of considerations led her players to different cities across the country, including Fort Worth, Texas, East Lansing, Michigan, and Nashville.
“We spent hours and hours thinking about what was best for everyone,” Pollard said. “Did they need to win? Did they need to maybe get challenged more? Who had a chance to make the NCAAs? What did they need? It was kind of really fun doing it.”
2. An improbable doubles team nearly reached the NCAA Tournament
The coaching staff also had the task of deciding which players would pair up to play doubles. For NU, graduate student Britany Lau — who led the ’Cats with 19 doubles wins last season — and freshman Mika Dagan Fruchtman marked Pollard’s most successful fall pairing.
Pollard said she changes around her doubles teams often to get a glimpse of who plays well together during the early fall. She added that Lau and Dagan Fruchtman instantly proved incredible.
“When we saw Brit and Mika together, all three of us immediately went, ‘Hmm, OK. We might be onto something here,’” Pollard said. “That, going into the fall, was not a partnership we had written down.”
The two reached the semifinals in both the ITA Regional Championship and the ITA Sectional Championship. They were named alternates for the NCAA Doubles Tournament held in Waco, Texas, this week but will not participate.
Pollard said their success can be attributed to their playstyles, which mesh very well together.
“Mika’s ability to build a point cross-court is very, very good,” Pollard said. “(Lau’s) finishing style and her ability to attack and Mika’s ability to set her up just complement each other very, very nicely.”
3. Veterans exemplify a strong fall performance
Lau’s success extended beyond doubles. She was the lone NU player to qualify for the ITA Sectional Championship in singles, where she reached the second round and took a top 60 player in the nation to a close third-set match.
Pollard heaped significant praise on the sixth-year athlete.
“Brit’s come back a totally different player from last year,” the five-time Big Ten Coach of the Year said. “If there’s anyone the MVP of the fall, it’s Brit. … Her whole sort of attacking mentality and aggressiveness is just totally different than it was a year ago.”
Lau wasn’t the only veteran to command applause during the fall slate. Senior Kiley Rabjohns earned Big Ten Player of the Week for the week of Oct. 30 after she registered a 6-1 record — including a 3-0 singles record — at the Spartan Invite.
“This girl sacrifices her body for the game of tennis and for Northwestern a lot, and we just have to manage it,” Pollard said. “When she is fresh and her body is cooperating, she plays an incredibly high level.”
Pollard said senior Sydney Pratt, who was the ’Cats’ No. 4 singles player last year and the highest-ranked returner, “wants to go out on her best season ever.”
4. The team is littered with talent
Although Pollard dubbed Lau the fall season MVP, she wasn’t the player who led NU in singles victories. It wasn’t even a returning competitor.
It was freshman Maia Loureiro, who registered nine singles wins during the fall campaign.
“She didn’t lose much,” Pollard said. “She really had a great fall. We made a lot of changes to her game this summer, and she embraced it and is coachable and is eager to learn and get better.”
Beyond Loureiro, Pollard raved about her squad depth. Sophomore Neena Feldman — who appeared as part of the ’Cats’ No. 2 doubles for a chunk of last season — posted a 3-0 singles record in the June Stewart Invitational.
Freshman Erica Jessel reached the singles round of 16 at the ITA Regional Championship, defeating a seeded player in the process.
“We’re deeper than we’ve probably ever been,” Pollard said. “I think this is a special group.”
5. Dual season expectations remain high
Pollard said in lieu of the fall season’s completion, she has yet to make any decisions on her dual season lineup.
“It’s tough — we are 10 deep,” Pollard said. “I’m not looking forward to those decisions at all.”
NU was a bubble NCAA Tournament team last season, and Pollard hopes her squad can avoid that fate with an even better 2025 campaign.
She pointed to her team’s ability to win the doubles point — something NU did in 21 of 27 matches and nine of the final 10 matches last season — and her team’s depth as to how it can take a performance leap.
“We don’t want to be (ranked) 33, 38 in the country, worrying, looking over our shoulder, ‘Are we going to make the NCAAs?’” Pollard said. “Our goal is to be between 15 and 25, and I think we did a lot of things this fall that will help propel that to happen.”
Email: [email protected]
Related Stories:
— Women’s Tennis: Northwestern competes at Michigan State, TCU as fall season winds down
— Women’s Tennis: Northwestern players finding form as team splits between Nashville, East Lansing
