ANDY BAGGOT Insider Related Content Varsity Magazine

BY ANDY BAGGOT
UWBadgers.com Insider

ITA Indoor Championships Information

MADISON, Wis. - When Tina Samara accepted an offer to become the Wisconsin women's tennis coach in June of 2013, she authored a public letter to her former employers explaining why.

"It was an opportunity that I truly could not pass up because of the special place that Wisconsin holds in my heart," Samara wrote in an online message to her bosses, colleagues and student-athletes at West Virginia where she worked from 2010 to '13.

How could that be? Samara has no visible ties to Wisconsin on her resume.

She grew up in Oyster Bay, New York, where she fell in love with tennis and soccer. She attended Georgia, where she was a two-time All-American and played for an NCAA championship club on the hardcourt. She had previous coaching stops at Colorado and Louisiana-Lafayette after an unfulfilling experience in the corporate sector.

Samara's husband, Brian, has no known ties to the state.

While it's true that Samara was born in Norway and Wisconsin has one of the largest Norwegian populations in the United States - she even speaks the language fluently - she has no known bloodlines linking her to anyone in the state.

So how did Wisconsin come to have such a prominent place in Samara's life?

The answer can be found this week at Nielsen Tennis Stadium, where the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) will stage its prestigious Division I women's national indoor team championship from Friday to Monday.

The 16-team field, which features the highest-ranked programs in the nation in a given season as well as the host institution, is returning to Madison after a five-year hiatus. The ITA indoors is such a marquee event that its champion or runner-up has gone on to claim the NCAA team title 16 times.

One of those instances came in 1994 when Georgia won both crowns. Samara was a front-liner player on that squad - as well as the one that returned in 1995 and repeated as ITA titlist - and remembers her first visits to Madison with intense fondness.

She still has a framed picture of team members posing outside the Edgewater Hotel on frozen Lake Mendota with their Bulldogs gear on. Samara grew up in wintry climes, but many of her teammates were oblivious to the four-season concept.

"I had some teammates that had never seen snow," she said. "Some of them had never made a snowball before."

Samara remembers discovering humus during one of those visits to Madison and having impromptu games - like catching grapes in her mouth from 20 paces - to pass the time between ITA matches.

Samara would go on to play professionally, qualify twice for the U.S. Open singles draw, appear in Sports Illustrated in its "Faces in the Crowd" segment and graduate from Georgia in 1996.

"Prior to (coming to Madison) it I didn't think much about it," she said. "It was just another event we were going to."

It became something memorable.

"Madison's such a cool city," Samara said. "There's great restaurants. It's beautiful. The fact it is more of a winter wonderland most of the time is a unique thing for our sport because most of the bigger tournaments are outside in warmer weather, so it makes it kind of special that it's here."

The affection Samara felt for Madison grew so strong that when Wisconsin officials went looking for a replacement for Brian Fleishman, she didn't hesitate.

Nor did Samara flinch when the opportunity to bring the ITA indoor nationals back to Nielsen - they were there from 1988 to 2010 - came to life.

"You could argue that it's the toughest tournament in college to get into for a team because it's only 16 teams as opposed to the NCAAs that are 64 (teams) now," she said. "I'm so excited for my team to be around programs like the ones coming in."

Like Vanderbilt, the defending NCAA champion. Like Duke, the national titlist in 2009. Like California and Texas A&M, which were national runners-up in 2009 and '13, respectively.

"You're going to learn just by being around programs like this," Samara said. "As long as we learn from every match, regardless of the outcome, we're going to be better."

Samara doesn't think unranked Wisconsin (2-0) is that far removed from being a top-20 program and believes this tournament will be a revelation in that regard for her players.

"They're going to learn those differences are very little," she said, "but those little things make a big difference in the outcome."

Such as what?

"When you're working with a program like ours and the level we're at right now, I think they think they have to be way better than they have to be to win," Samara said of her charges. "That they have to do way more - they have to hit winners all over - and that's not the case."

Samara said statistics show that "99 percent of matches are won based on who makes fewer errors, not who hits more winners."

So the takeaway, according to Samara, is "be smart and make better decisions."

The hope is that the lessons will be enduring and translate to Samara's vision for the program.

Short-term, she believes the Badgers, who knocked off 44th-ranked Houston, 6-1, in the season opener and followed with a 5-2 win over Marquette, "have a schedule to make the (NCAA) tournament." Samara has a nice mix of veterans - four upperclassmen, led by seniors Lauren Burich and Lauren Chyphya - and youth with two sophomores and three freshmen.

Long term, Samara maintains Wisconsin should be a perennial NCAA tournament qualifier and routinely challenge the likes of Michigan, Northwestern and Ohio State for the Big Ten Conference title.

"I don't see why this program can't be a top-10 program, long term," she said.

Hosting the ITA indoor nationals should help in that process. There's only one school that can guarantee a prospective student-athlete that they'll play in the event and that's the one staging it. Rankings and results determine the rest.

Wisconsin will host the event again in 2018 and, Samara hopes, will become a regular site for the event again as it was from 1988 to 2010.

"A great recruiting tool," Samara said.

The strange part about Samara's current lot in life is that she didn't think about coaching until well after leaving college. She was working at General Electric in Colorado when she found herself volunteering to coach on the side. Friends noticed how much she seemed to enjoy the teaching dynamic and encouraged her to pursue that passion.

Those who knew Samara when she was a player now kid her about being coach.

"I could be difficult," she said. "I never thought I'd be a college coach - forget where.

"All my teammates laugh. We were little pains in the butt and now I'm getting my share on the other side."

Perhaps, but Samara is having fun doing something she enjoys in a place she learned to love all those years ago.

"It's helping kids to be successful," she said.