Third-year Gophers women's tennis coach Catrina Thompson had players from all over the world – three from the U.S. (Minnesota, Florida and Illinois), two from Canada (Toronto and Vancouver) and one apiece from the Bahamas, Egypt, Turkey and Uruguay.
But she got them to mesh pretty well.
"The goal we set each year are to do better than the year before," she said before the spring season began.
Mission accomplished.
In 2018, her first season, the Gophers were 14-12 overall and 6-5 (tied for seventh) in the Big Ten, and improved slightly last season to 14-11 and 6-5 (tied for sixth) in conference play.
This season, before the coronavirus pandemic abruptly stopped the entire sports world, the Gophers made a much bigger jump to 12-3 overall and 2-0 in the Big Ten.
That record needs a bit of perspective:
- The Gophers had a nine-match winning streak,tying for the third longest winning streak in the 45-year history of the program (the 2000 team won 12 in a row, the 1978 team 11, and the 1997 and 2003 teams nine straight)
- The .800 winning percentage was the best since 1978 when Minnesota finished 30-6 (.861)
- The Gophers were 10-0 at the Baseline Tennis Center, their spiffy home indoor facility
- The Gophers had not finished higher than fifth place in the conference standings since 2003 when they were 18-7 and tied for first in the Big Ten standings with a 9-1 mark. That's their lone conference title ever. … This year their last match was a 4-3 win over No. 21-ranked Wisconsin (8-2, 0-1). Earlier they beat Iowa 4-1 in a match that didn't count in the conference standings and Rutgers 7-0 in a match that did. So a high conference finish looked realistic
Three freshmen and three seniors – who have the option of coming back because the NCAA gave spring sports athletes an extra year of eligibility -- were the keys to this team.
