Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the 1997 Women's Tennis NCAA Round of 16 Team
Twenty years ago the 1996-1997 Carson-Newman women’s tennis team made a run to the 1997 NCAA Round of Sixteen, a feat that no other women’s tennis team has been able to accomplish at Mossy Creek.
JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – Twenty years ago the 1996-1997 Carson-Newman women's tennis team made a run to the 1997 NCAA Round of Sixteen, a feat that no other women's tennis team has been able to accomplish at Mossy Creek.
The '97 team finished the season with an overall record of 21-7, while finishing fourth in the South Atlantic Conference regular season with a 4-3 record.
Going into the 1997 season Carson-Newman head tennis coach Jean Love, in her 10th season as the mentor, knew that she had a solid team going into the season. Love returned six players from the 1996 unit that went 15-7 overall and advanced to the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
Margeaux Clements, Elaine Denison, Catherine Evans and Andrea Moore were the nucleus of the group moving into the 1997 season. The quartet of players combined to go 72-27 during the '96 campaign. Laura Darby and Melissa Maconachy provided experienced depth to the roster heading in the '97 season.
Love knew that she needed to add a few more pieces to the puzzle to complete her squad. The lone freshman that the Eagles signed that off-season was Kristie Dargie a native of Titusville, Fla. "I got lucky when she came to Carson-Newman to play tennis," Love said. "Her brother was on the baseball team here at the time and that's how I got her." Dargie did not disappoint in her freshman campaign for the Eagles going 16-10 overall.
The biggest tennis signee of the '96 off-season was Shannon Kagawa. "I was just sitting in my office one day and in walked Shannon Kagawa," Love said. "She told me that she wanted to play tennis while she was at Carson-Newman. It took me a while at first to realize who she was, but then it started to click for me that she had been really good for [the University of Tennessee]. If you go over to their indoor facility she has a banner that is hanging up."
Kagawa was a transfer from the University of Tennessee who played from 1991-1993. During her time in Knoxville, The native of Hawaii compiled a singles record of 22-22 and a doubles record of 26-18. While playing for the Volunteers she was named a doubles All-American after the 1992 season.
Just how good was the 1997 women's tennis team? Every starter on the team reached double-digit wins in both singles and doubles play. Three players had at least 18 wins in singles play during the season. Kagawa went 18-4 at No.1 singles, Moore went 21-11 playing at the No.3 position and Evans finished with a 23-11 record playing at the No. 5 slot.
Moore (Proffitt) remembered how strong the starting lineup for the Eagles was from the No. 1 to the No. 6 position. "We all had a desire to win and did not like to lose." Moore replied, "We would do whatever we had to do to come off the court with a win because the last thing we wanted to do was let our team down."
Darby (Purdom) said, "Shannon Kagawa was our powerhouse at the No. 1 spot, Andrea Moore was a strong team leader and encourager while Margaux Clements would not leave the court until she had given it her all. We had a tough group of girls, humble and hard-working, determined enough to often battle through three sets to win matches."
After losing 6-3 on the road to Gardner-Webb on April 1 Carson-Newman reeled off a seven-game winning streak to close out the regular season of play. It helped that the Eagles were at home for six out of the eight matches in the final month of the season.
The Eagles realized that they needed to make a run in the SAC Tournament if they wanted a chance at qualifying for an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament.
Carson-Newman faced-off against the host school, the Catawba College Catawba Indians, in the opening round of the SAC Tournament. Earlier in the season the two teams had met in Jefferson City with the Eagles prevailing with a 7-2 victory over the Catawba Indians. Love's ladies took care of business defeating the Catawba Indians 5-2.
In the SAC semifinals Carson-Newman was up against top-seeded and SAC regular season champion, Presbyterian. The Blue Hose were coming off their second consecutive undefeated regular season in conference play. The Eagles fell 5-0 to the Blue Hose and ended up in the third-place game against the Wingate Bulldogs.
The Orange and Blue were able to avenge a 7-2 defeat to Wingate from earlier in the season edging out the Bulldogs 5-4 to finish in third place at the SAC Tournament. The win helped the Eagles earn a berth to the NCAA Tournament.
Elon, N.C. was the destination for the program in the First and Second Rounds of the NCAA East Regional Championships. The Eagles first opponent was the Barton Bulldogs out of Wilson, N.C. Carson-Newman smashed through the opening round with a 5-0 victory against the Bulldogs.
The second round match for Carson-Newman was against Elon a school that the Eagles had beaten 6-3 earlier in the season. "Elon was without their No.2 singles player in the first matchup, so we knew that they were going to be at full health in the regional final," Love responded. "We knew that we needed to win at least two of the three doubles matches if we wanted to win the regional championship.
"About a week after the SAC Tournament, my assistant coach Anne Miller and I decided on a strategy to get more points out of our doubles teams by using a new formation. Anne and I decided that when our doubles teams were serving that we would use an Australian formation instead of a traditional formation."
The Australian formation in doubles tennis, is a formation that takes away the cross court shot option for the returner. The formation forces the returner to play the ball to the server's stronger side.
"We wanted to show Elon something different and it was something that they were not expecting." Love replied, "The day before we didn't use it against Barton at all, so Elon was surprised when we started use the tactic in doubles play the next day. We used the tactic primarily at No. 2 and No. 3 doubles because we knew that our top team was capable of winning."
"It actually rained the day of the finals and it forced us to move to an indoor facility for the final." Love answered, "I told the girls that this was a positive for us to play indoors because of the faster surface. We start to play and our No. 1 team of Kagawa and Moore are holding their own against Elon. The No. 3 team of Evans and Dargie were using the tactic effectively of switching between the traditional and Australian formations that we had worked on in practice. The No. 2 team though of Clements and Maconachy found themselves down in the eight game pro-set 4-1. The reason was that they had not used the Australian formation once in the match. I told them to go ahead and use it because they had nothing else to lose. They began to use the tactic and fought back to even the match at 4-4. Elon could not handle returning the ball down the line consistently. Then the doubt started to creep into our opponent's minds as we started to gain more confidence in the match. Pretty soon Clements and Maconachy had won the match 8-5 and was because they had used the Australian formation effectively."
The Eagles ended up sweeping Elon in doubles play to earn a crucial three points going into singles play. "Every match in singles play was a tough, hard-fought match for every point," Love said. Carson-Newman managed to pick up two points in singles play to win the Regional Championship 5-3 over Elon.
"I don't think that we would have won that match, if we had not swept Elon in doubles play," Love replied. "It was very sweet to get the victory for two reasons. The first was because it was the last Division II match for Elon before they moved up to Division I. The second was from a coaching perspective, you work with kids a lot and sometimes you don't always see the fruits of your labor, but this was one match where a coaching decision actually made a difference in the outcome of a match."
With the victory over Elon it was the first time that Carson-Newman had reached the Round of Sixteen in the NCAA Tournament. The Eagles began to pack their bags for a trip to Springfield, Mo.
Moore (Proffitt) remembered how special the sendoff from Mossy Creek was for the tennis team. "On the morning that we left I remember coach Mike Turner came on the bus to give us a pep talk to send us off. I remember thinking how great it was that a football coach came to wish us good luck."
Darby (Purdom) had a similar memory of the sendoff to the national tournament. "I still remember the feeling of finishing my organic chemistry final exam and then getting on the bus to go to the tournament," Darby said. "Coach Love's grounded, experienced leadership and sense of humor led us through an exciting season that year."
The Eagles faced off against the No. 2 seed the Lynn University Knights in the round of sixteen. The Knights came into the contest with an 18-1 record and defeated the Eagles. "They were just a stronger team than we were," Love said. Lynn would go on to defeat Armstrong Atlantic for the 1997 National Championship.
"That was a wild ride with that 1997 team," Love reacted. "At the beginning of the year I did not think we would have that much success, I knew that we were a solid team but I never thought about making it to the Round of Sixteen in the NCAA Tournament."
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