After Northwestern women’s tennis slumped to its first defeat of the season at in-state rivals Illinois Saturday, coach Claire Pollard rued the mistakes that cost her team in a series of tightly contested matches.
“We had so many opportunities — opportunity after opportunity — and we just didn’t take it very well,” Pollard said.
Yet, despite the loss, Pollard said she found silver linings from the Wildcats’ (3-1, 0-0 Big Ten) trip to Champaign.
She said the match –– which didn’t count for each team’s conference record and took place because the two schools are hosting the ITA Women’s National Team Indoor Championships and were both exempt from the weekend’s qualifying events –– served as an opportunity for a young team to replicate playing in a Big Ten environment.
“It’s a hard place to play, the fans are rough,” Pollard said. “We needed, especially for the young players, to hear that, feel that, understand what it’s going to be like.”
Pollard mentioned that her singles lineup featured four underclassmen, while Illinois only started one. She added that she thought the team’s performance was “so much better” than in its loss at Illinois last season when the Wildcats won the doubles point but lost all five completed singles matches.
Still, Pollard said the positives she took away did not take center stage in her post-match message to the team.
“I wasn’t particularly nice after we lost,” Pollard said. “We can’t take any consolation that we played hard. We gotta win, and we didn’t.”
At Atkins Tennis Center, NU began the day by losing the doubles point after failing to convert a match point in the ultimately decisive No. 3 doubles match.
In that contest, freshman Maia Loureiro and sophomore Neena Feldman reeled off four consecutive games from 4-1 down and found themselves up match point at 5-4, 40-40. However, Loureiro sent a forehand return long, and the Fighting Illini’s Violeta Martinez and Alice Xu eventually prevailed in a tiebreak.
In the other doubles sets, No. 1 pairing freshman Erica Jessel and senior Sydney Pratt lost 6-4, while No. 2 pairing graduate student Britany Lau and freshman Mika Dagan Fruchtman won 7-5.
“We kind of blew the doubles point,” Pollard said. “I think had we got that, the match switches in our favor.”
In singles, four NU players won the first set, putting the team on track for victory. But, of those four, only Pratt won her second set, prevailing 6-2, 7-5 at the No. 6 spot.
No. 4 Feldman succeeded in three sets, but No. 1 Dagan Fruchtman and No. 2 Jessel lost in two, leaving the team’s fate in sophomore No. 5 Autumn Rabjohns’s hands.
Rabjohns took the first set 6-2, but as the match went on, her opponent Ariel Madatali wore her down by utilizing a forehand slice and tracking down balls to extend rallies. Madatali took the second and third sets 6-2, clinching a 4-2 victory for Illinois.
Pollard and Rabjohns each said Madatali’s play style reminded them of the NU sophomore’s own.
“At times, I was like, ‘I’m not gonna miss, and she’s not gonna miss either, and that’s gonna be this match,’” Rabjohns said. “I was hoping to outlast her, but she got the better of me.”
NU returned to Combe Tennis Center Sunday and dispatched DePaul and Eastern Illinois in a doubleheader. The three underclassmen who lost at Illinois — Dagan Fruchtman, Jessel and Rabjohns — all earned dominant wins.
Pratt, one of the team’s two longest-tenured players, praised the younger players’ work ethic. As a team leader, she said she hopes to help them learn what it takes to win singles matches.
“Playing college tennis matches is very different from junior tennis, and it’s very different from practicing,” Pratt said. “There’s such a fine balance between how tough you are on yourself and how much you train during the week, and finding that balance is really important. Now, as a senior, I’ve found it, and I think I can be a good role model for that.”
The ’Cats return to action Sunday to face Georgia Tech (3-2, 0-0 ACC), a team Pollard said is off to a “slow start” but expects to improve soon. In that contest and beyond, the Illinois loss will have provided vital preparation for a team with high aspirations.
“I’m really hoping that’s a good, hard lesson early on that we can grow from,” Pollard said.
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