Feb. 11, 2004
EVANSTON, Ill.--After competing against the nation's best teams in the USTA-ITA National Team Indoor Championship, Northwestern's seventh-ranked women's tennis team (5-1) gets no breaks as it plays host to two other ranked teams, No. 37 South Alabama at 5 p.m. Friday and No. 11 Harvard at 6 p.m. Sunday.
"It can do nothing but good things (for our program) to play all these ranked teams," said head coach Claire Pollard, whose team climbed one spot in the rankings this week. "But right now, we are more focused on ourselves and what we need to do rather than the rankings of the other teams."
Last week, fourth-ranked Cristelle Grier (Surrey, England/Putney) took down the top player in the nation, Georgia's Agata Cioroch, in straight sets to go 3-0 in the tournament. Two other Wildcats that went undefeated were Alexis Prousis (Lake Forest, Ill./Lake Forest), who upended No. 68 Natalie Frazier of Georgia, and Ruth Barnes (Cambridge, England/Hills Road Sixth Form College).
This weekend the 'Cats face a new set of challenges. The Jaguars (2-1) won the 2003 Sun Belt Championship and made it to the second round of the NCAA Tournament. They feature 85th-ranked Katarina Palenikova, who is 3-0 this season at No. 3 singles and is this week's selection for Sun Belt Player of the Week.
"I think South Alabama is a better team than its ranking indicates," said Pollard. "Having played more matches than they have may be an advantage for us, but we will not know until after we play."
The No. 50 duo of Courtney Bergman and Susanna Lingman top the doubles lineup for the Crimson (2-2), who also fell to Georgia at the tournament last week. Bergman checks in as the 25th-best singles player and holds a 4-3 record.
Harvard will meet Illinois, and South Alabama will face Illinois State, before competing against Northwestern.