Q&A: Trent Hagan

July 23, 2008

No stranger to success, Trent Hagan translated his high school success and undefeated senior season of high school tennis to three consecutive seasons of winning records in singles and doubles play at Marquette. The Alpharetta, Ga., native, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame at Centennial High School, saw action in 34 matches during the 2007-08 campaign, primarily playing at the No. 1 singles spot and pairing up with Dusan Medan, amongst others, on the doubles side. He tallied a 12-10 dual record in singles play, and helped account for 18 doubles victories en route to earning his third letter as a Golden Eagle.

Being from Georgia, how did you end up at Marquette?

It's kind of a funny story. I was getting letters from different colleges and I'd never heard of Marquette before. Something that kind of stuck out to me was that coach Rodecap had sent me a handwritten letter, which was something I hadn't received yet, so I kind of took that with a little bit more interest and ended up starting talking with him and a relationship started to develop and I really loved coach and just kind of went from there. I came up and took a visit, just loved the school and loved the atmosphere and just kind of went from there.

What about Marquette stood out to you?

Just being from the South and coming up north and living in the city when I'm not used to living in the city, it was kind of a new experience for me so that was interesting, just a new atmosphere which was kind of fun and I love the people around here. I mean the staff, everyone was just really helpful and really made my first couple experiences really pleasurable, so that was the biggest thing.

You've had a winning season, in both singles and doubles, every season since you started here. What's been the key to your consistency?

Our team as a whole, we work pretty hard conditioning and we're out there all the time, we're grinding quite a bit. It's kind of a mentality our team has. All of us usually have pretty solid seasons, we're all usually in the winning marks and that just goes out to our hard work and preparation.

With the college tennis season being drawn out in both the fall and the spring, how do you deal with such a lengthy schedule without getting worn out?

I love tennis, I really do, so it's easier for me to keep playing. Sure, there are those days that you're just like, "Oh my gosh," but at the same time, you look at the long run, and the more you hit, the more you train, the better your results are. So if you want the best results, it's a little bit easier to kind of keep going when you have that mentality.

The team lost three seniors (Brett Binkley, Greg Sirotek and Pete Van Lieshout) to graduation. How valuable were they this past season, on and off the court?

Those seniors, I knew them pretty well, they were with me for three years. Their leadership was incredible. They showed me a lot of different things that helped me mature quite a bit, make some better decisions. We are definitely going to miss them, they were such a huge valuable asset to us. During practice, they'd constantly be pushing us and off the court they'd be pushing us with academics and keeping our lives in order. They were huge assets for our team, it was hard to see them go.

As a senior, how do you see your role on the team?

How will you assume more of a leadership position? I've kind of always been the guy who just sits in the back and lets everybody do everything and just kind of goes with the flow - that's more my personality - but this year, I'm trying to take that leadership role. Starting with helping out the freshmen is my first project, get them accustomed to Marquette and the way our tennis team moves forward, that's kind of my big goal right now.

Summer's usually a time to relax for college students, but athletes have to use the summer to constantly improve. What have you been doing this summer?

When I was back home in Georgia, I was helping my coach out on the tennis court, playing quite a bit. But that was more like my vacation part of the summer, away from Marquette. But now that I'm back up here taking classes and working out, its tennis all year round, I love it.

Anything in particular you're working on improving upon?

My mental game has been something that I struggled with, especially last year, but in the past. There are just a couple things that I'm still trying to figure out with my game mentally and just really focusing on those goals of what to focus on during a match, and blowing off points that you lose, that kind of stuff. I'm really just trying to get strong mentally.

What's something that an outsider looking in wouldn't necessarily realize about college tennis?

I think a lot of people that come to the matches don't realize how competitive of a sport it is. A lot of people don't really know the intensity of a tennis match, and they come in and having people screaming and people throwing their rackets, I think it's a little bit more wild than they're anticipating. I think it's just funny to see some of the people's faces and reactions after the match, like "Can I say that and do this kind of stuff?" I think coming into the match, people don't understand they can yell and cheer, it's kind of funny.

Do you feel pressure playing at the No. 1, where you played most of last year?

I feel pressure in general just because my expectations for myself are pretty high. Playing in the No. 1 spot, you're going to be playing a good player every time. Every team has quite a few good players and the No. 1 spot is always a challenging place to play. So there's always that pressure on wanting to do well, but at the same time you have to take it with a grain of salt and keep playing because it's a team sport and you want to do well for your team as well as yourself.

Last season, you paired up with four of your teammates in doubles, is it hard for you to switch from partner to partner?

We do a lot of experimenting with doubles teams and seeing who flows with who because each person on our team has a different style and different styles together. It's not very difficult because our team really meshes pretty well together both on and off the court and it's not really a big deal to jump from player to player just because our bonds initially are pretty strong. Just playing with another player isn't difficult, but [thinking] "I'm used to playing with him" is going to be more difficult. I think all of us just really do well together, it's just who's the best team together is what we're trying to figure out. I think our preparation last year was more for this year, so it'll be interesting to see how things go.

What was the most exciting match of last year for you to play in?

Arizona State, for sure - the one match we did lose at home. The atmosphere for that match was just incredible. I've never seen so many people up at Helfaer. Everybody was going crazy and the match was as tight as it could have gotten, coming down to the last match and the last point. The adrenaline and energy and everything during that match was just awesome, I loved it.

Any goals for next season, both individually and team wise?

The goal is to always perform the best that you can. I think the goal that we can absolutely achieve this year is winning the BIG EAST Championship. It's something that we've looked forward to for a long time, and now with everyone in their game set, I think we have the potential. We had the potential last year but we definitely have the potential this year too to take the title. I'd love to see us get to the NCAA Tournament and I'd love to see our team get ranked. As far as individually, no individual goals yet, but as a team, I definitely think we have the potential to do well.

What major are you? Any post-graduation plans yet?

Criminology and law studies. There are a couple of different options, I haven't really decided which path yet.