Loring achieves 800th career victory

He couldn’t figure out why his players weren’t as sharp as normal. The No. 39 IU women’s tennis team was on the road against Western Michigan in Kalamazoo, Mich. Friday and the Hoosiers fell behind early in the match after losing the doubles point.

“They were tight as a drum,” IU Coach Lin Loring said. “I couldn’t figure it out.”

IU rallied to win the next four points en route to a 5-2 victory against the Broncos. It was Loring’s 800th career victory, the most in NCAA Division 1 women's tennis history.

When the team returned to its hotel, he figured out why his players were on edge.

“They had done a few surprises for me, which they couldn’t have done if they had lost the match,” he said.

His players gave him donuts with “800” painted in red icing as well as 800 customized red and white M&M’s — on one side it said “800 wins” or “IU women’s tennis.” Loring’s face was on the other side.

“I had no idea you could do that to an M&M,” he said, laughing. “It’s pretty unbelievable.”

Senior Kayla Fujimoto said it was a cool experience to be a part of the team for Loring’s milestone victory, adding that it's hard for her to wrap her mind around how many matches he has won.

“It’s such a big number," she said. "And if you think about how many matches we play a season, it’s pretty incredible what he’s done.”

Not only is Loring the winningest coach in NCAA history, but he has achieved most of his victories at the same university — Indiana. Loring, who is in his 41st season coaching and 37th year at IU, has stood the test of time in a profession that he described as a "high-burnout sport."

“You seldom see anyone in it for the long haul," he said.

He said coaching is like most jobs, meaning you have to switch employers if you want a raise in salary. Coaches leap frog from one university to the next until they land their destination jobs or burn out entirely.

Loring said coaches jump schools every four or five years looking to better their lot. Or they get fired or retire.

“It’s a really, really high turnover profession and it’s hard for people to put together a career like that," he said.

Loring could have been one of the coaches who climbed the coaching ladder.

After four seasons coaching at the University of California-Santa Barbara, he became the head coach of the IU women’s tennis team in 1977. After only three seasons in Bloomington, Stanford University came calling.

Loring described the position as the head coach of the Cardinal as “arguably the number one job in the country.”

Stanford, who has won 17 national championships since 1982, was on a quarter system, compared to IU’s semester-based schedule. The university wasn't going to name its coach until the first week of October and by that point, IU would have been in session for five weeks.

Loring said he couldn’t walk out on his team that far into the school year.

“People would tell you my one trait has always been loyalty to my friends and my players and the school,” he said.

In addition to his loyalty to his players and the staff, Loring said the allure of Bloomington grew on him and ultimately kept him at IU.

“I thought it was a nice town to raise a family," he said.

Loring said IU’s athletic director at the time told him that he had displayed the kind of loyalty he wanted in a coach.

His commitment to the University has paid dividends during his tenure. By remaining in Bloomington, Loring led the Hoosiers to 104 consecutive Big Ten victories from 1978-1985. In total, he has had 12 undefeated conference seasons, 16 Big Ten titles and one national championship.

Junior Katie Klyczek said his win total shows how great he is as a coach.

“No one has even come close to it,” she said. “It just shows how much passion he has for this sport and for his team and what a great job he does.”

Loring has provided stability and consistency for the program, which has largely allowed IU women’s tennis to avoid long rebuilding periods.

Every time a university changes coaches, the program loses recruits and has to spend several years reloading and rebuilding. Loring said he hasn't had to endure many of those down periods at IU.

“You can kind of see what our basketball program went through every time they changed coaches and part of the 800 (wins) is due to the continuity our program has had," he said.

Despite having the most career Division 1 women’s tennis victories in NCAA history, Loring said he has never been about the wins and losses. He said he didn’t know he was on the verge of winning his 800th career match until three days before the Hoosiers faced Western Michigan.

Instead, his greatest reward is the connections he has made over the course of several decades as a coach. He said the relationships he has developed are more important to him than the wins.

Loring attributes the milestone to a lot of great assistant coaches, academic counselors, strength coaches, sports medicine personnel, and most importantly, athletes who have contributed to his hundreds of victories.

“I’ve always been more about the people involved and the connections that you make, (the) Christmas cards you get back every year from my former players with their family pictures," he said.

Junior Alecia Kauss said the players look up to him almost as a second father, and she said it's because of who he is off the court just as much as it is who he is in the heat of a match.

“It’s not just the on-the-court stuff either,” she said. “It’s him as a person. It’s everything."

With seven returning players from last year's NCAA Tournament team and only three seniors, the No. 40 Hoosiers (4-1) are in position to add to Loring's career win total in the next few seasons.

When asked how many wins Loring would finish with in his career, junior Shannon Murdy joked that he would reach 1,600, given his long and successful tenure in Bloomington.

The realistic consensus among the players is that he should aim for 1,000 career wins.

“I would hope that he stays coaching for as long as possible so that as many people could have him because he does great for the program and he’s helped all of us individually,” Klyczek said.

Follow reporter Andy Wittry on Twitter @AndyWittry