Marquette will be moving all varsity sports from Conference USA to the Big East Conference next school year. To commemorate Marquette's 10th and final year in C-USA, the Tribune is running a series taking a look at each varsity sport's time in the conference. This fifth installment features the men's tennis team.

Marquette tennis fans are a select group. Regulars usually see the same people at every home match, and almost all of them have heard former player-turned-fan Creighton Macy cheer on his former teammates.

Macy's favorite memory of his playing career is a 4-3 victory over Saint Louis in 2004, his senior season. Macy had lost his singles match against SLU in 2003, so winning the match indicated how the team changed one season to the next.

"Beating them at home showed us how much we improved," Macy said.

Macy, currently a marketing assistant in the Marquette Athletic Department, played both for former coach David Staniford and current coach Steve Rodecap.

Staniford coached the men's tennis team for most of its often mercurial 10-year history in Conference USA, compiling a 68-88 record before leaving the program after the 2003 season.

Marquette's best seasons in C-USA were its first two, in 1996 and 1997.

The team finished 13-7 in 1996 and 11-12 in 1997, notching fifth and sixth places in C-USA, respectively.

Those teams were led by Dan Lencina, arguably Marquette's best player during the school's tenure in C-USA.

"He was a super player and a 4.0 student," Staniford said. "He was the hardest worker I think I ever had. It was kind of like osmosis because it passed through everyone on those teams."

Lencina is still the only player from Marquette to have been named to the C-USA first team, earning the distinction twice, in 1996 and 1997.

Peter Mojzis was also selected for multiple all-conference teams — he was named to the third team in 2000 and 2001.

However, most of Marquette's players did not burst onto the scene like Lencina and Mojzis, according to Staniford. Players like Kent and Kurt Davies, two players he recruited from Wisconsin in the mid to late 90s, were more typical.

"Those guys didn't get to be good players right away. It took three or four years for them to really get good," Staniford said.

He tried to organize the team accordingly.

"You try to get the team really good every three or four years," he said.

The recruiting challenges facing Marquette contributed to the up and down results from year to year — for instance, the team finished 14-8 in 2001, but fell to 6-13 in 2002 and then to 3-14 in 2003 — according to Staniford.

Many of Marquette's players were good students in addition to being tennis players, Staniford said.

"The ones I had were excellent students," he said. "It was important to them that they got their 4.0s."

Staniford often had to schedule practices around his players' schedules, some of whom did not get out of class until 8 p.m.

There are changes occurring in the program now, mainly with Rodecap trying to eliminate the wide swings in the program's fortune.

Rodecap, who left Northern Illinois with a 50-46 record after four years with just one losing season, has begun making moves to try to bolster the program after the two-year swoon the team suffered in 2002 and 2003.

"You need to get guys in the program that believe in the system you're trying to put in place and guys that put tennis at very high priority," he said.

"For me (Rodecap) has made all the difference. I think that Marquette has improved after every match since Coach Rodecap got here," said Macy, who will still come to every home match he can to cheer on his former team when it moves to the Big East next year.

This article appeared in The Marquette Tribune on April 21 2005.