By Hannah Bartlebaugh, Staff Writer
On April 25, the Wheaton College women’s tennis team upset the top-seeded North Central Cardinals to win its first College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin (CCIW) championship since 2019. With this win, it earned an automatic invitation to the NCAA Division III Tennis Championships from May 7-22.
Wheaton opened the tournament against Carthage on Friday. Head coach Jane Nelson said she sensed some nerves from the team when they huddled up before the match, but once they got onto the court, the team turned their nerves into good play.
They defeated Carthage and advanced to face North Central College in the final the next day. Nelson said that there was less pressure to defeat the Cardinals, since they were the top seed and were expected to win. For the past two years, North Central has defeated Wheaton in the conference tournament final.
However, her team stepped up.
“I sensed that day a real determination by our team that, ‘Hey, we’re gonna go out there and if they’re gonna win this, they’re gonna have to earn it,’” she said. “It was the best match we’ve played all year.”
The title came down to the No. 4 singles match, in which Wheaton was represented by senior communication media studies major Janet Kondo. Kondo said that although she was nervous, she felt the weight of her college career potentially coming to an end.
“And so that’s how I went into it, knowing that there’s really nothing to lose at this point,” she said. “So I went in with just an immense amount of excitement and feeling so confident in the team that we had this year.”
Kondo and her opponent split the first two sets. By the final set, she knew that the team needed one more match to clinch the title.
“I was like, ‘I cannot lose this thing.’ Everyone on our team has worked so hard,” she said. “This is your time to really lock in.”
When she won match point, she said she fell to the ground in excitement and relief, and all her teammates ran over to celebrate with her. “Just knowing that I truly have the best team on this planet and that we all got to celebrate this one together was such a highlight for me,” she said.
The Thunder earned accomplishments off the court as well. Mariclare O’Gorman, a sophomore studying communication and studio art, received the CCIW Elite 26 Award, given to the student-athlete with the highest cumulative GPA among competitors at each of the conference’s 26 championship sports. O’Gorman earned the honor with a 4.0 GPA.
She said that Nelson didn’t tell her ahead of time that she had been selected to win the award, so when she was announced as the winner, she was surprised. “I wasn’t expecting it, but it was cool to get that and be honored and the whole team was in a very excited mood,” she said.
The team’s next stop will be the regional rounds of the national championships, and the draw for that will be announced on Monday, May 4, at 11 a.m. In the meantime, Nelson said that she is proud of her team for playing well under pressure last weekend. She also expressed the importance of the players honoring God through their tennis.
“It can be tough sometimes in tennis because you’re out there by yourself on the court and there’s a lot of pressure,” she said. “And I’m really pleased with how well they did and represented the college, our athletic department, and certainly represented the Lord in the way they conducted themselves and in the effort they put forth as well.”
