Coach of the Year: Graham Raises Bar for Women's Tennis

At times this season, Harvard women’s tennis coach Gordon Graham was as awestruck by his team’s achievements as the people in the stands were. That his players shattered even his own expectations is a sign that his own performance was exemplary.

Looking solely at the class years among his regular lineup—two freshmen, three sophomores and one senior—one would not have expected this team to set new school standards of excellence by winning 21 of 26 matches for the year, advancing to the NCAA Round of 16 and achieving a No. 14 end-of-year ranking.

Graham made that all possible by bringing in consecutive classes of standout recruits and allowing newcomers and veterans alike to maximize their potential on the court.

A year ago, Graham’s top freshmen recruits Courtney Bergman, Susanna Lingman and Alexis Martire immediately rose to the top three spots of the lineup. While they were outstanding, the team struggled all year to get wins from the bottom half of its ladder. The Crimson finished second in the Ivy race and went 10-8 in the spring.

That lack of depth was a distant memory this season, as Harvard’s regular No. 4 through No. 6 players lost just six of 51 matches throughout the regular season. That was thanks in part to two standout freshmen recruits—Melissa Anderson and Eva Wang, sister of former No. 1 Ivy Wang ’99. Filling the remaining gap was the comeback of captain and former No. 1 Sanja Bajin, who flourished in her new No. 5 role.

Even though Harvard was exceptionally talented, talent alone is typically not enough for Ivy teams to advance deep in the NCAA tournament. Many Ivy schools, across all sports, lack the challenging competition during the regular season necessary to perform consistently at the national level during the postseason. And in women’s tennis, there’s plenty of competition between 316 Division I programs—a total exceeded by only men’s and women’s basketball and women’s cross-country.

One reason for Harvard’s success is that Graham’s staff included one assistant from Florida and one from Stanford—perennially the nation’s top two programs. New assistant Stephanie Nickitas was an Academic All-American and a two-time NCAA doubles champion at Florida, while third-year volunteer assistant Ania Bleszynski was a national singles finalist from Stanford. The two have three NCAA team titles between them.

Graham also provided a schedule for his players that made aspirations at the highest level attainable. An upset of No. 6 Washington early in the season set the tone immediately for what his team could accomplish.

By the end of the regular season, Harvard had played six top-25 teams and beaten four of them. With those regular season results, it clearly was no fluke when the Crimson advanced to the Round of 16 by defeating Big 12 champion Oklahoma State for the second time this season and No. 16 seed Arizona.

This season could be far from the end of Harvard’s rise. With Bajin the only junior or senior regularly in the lineup, Graham looked at this year’s NCAA Round of 16 loss to Stanford as more of a learning experience than an ending. The ambition, from the coach and the players alike, is to advance even deeper in the tournament next year. Given the progress they have made together so far, there is little reason to doubt they will.

—Staff writer David R. De Remer can be reached at deremer@post.harvard.edu.