In approximately two months the careers of three Illinois athletes will come to a halt.

These Illini will be less decorated than the class before them – a class of four All-Americans – but their impact on the Illinois men’s tennis program might be just as profound.

Seniors Chris Martin, Conner Murninghan and Evan Zeder have led the Illinois men’s tennis team throughout the 2004-2005 season. However, this year has turned out much differently than anyone expected when it started.

Many people expected the season would be a rebuilding year – after the addition of six freshmen to the lineup. But the team has not wavered from the standard of excellence Illinois head coach Craig Tiley is accustomed to.

“We’ve set a standard where, with our team, it doesn’t matter if we lose three of our top guys,” Zeder said. “Our team is going to be top in the country every year.”

This year’s accomplishments show how the men have maintained that gold standard. The Illini are undefeated at home. They have also been ranked in the nation’s top five throughout the entire year. In February, the team advanced to the semifinals of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) National Indoor Team Championships where they suffered a 4-3 loss to an older, more experienced Baylor team.

One reason the Illini have been so successful, despite losing a talented senior class in May 2004, was that they have not taken their eyes off their main goal. That objective is to make sure Illinois remains a national powerhouse.

“It’s been tough – everything has changed this year,” Murninghan said. “But our one goal has always remained consistent; and that is a good thing.”

With the many changes that have engulfed the Illinois tennis team this year, the senior class has had additional responsibilities. Now their legacy will not lie solely on the number of wins and losses they have acquired as athletes. Instead, they will be remembered for their roles in shaping the future of Illinois’ tennis dynasty and teaching the freshman class what it means to truly be an Illinois tennis player. It is not a responsibility the men have taken lightly.

“I’m looking forward to seeing the freshmen develop,” Martin said. “It’s exciting to see that – when I’m gone – the team might even be better next year than they are this year.”

The seniors have contributed athletically as well.

One of the defining moments of Martin’s tennis career came his sophomore season when he clinched the NCAA team title for the Illini with his three-set victory over Vanderbilt’s Lewis Smith. Throughout the season, Martin had been in and out of the lineup. He finally secured a place in the top six during the championships, where he earned his place in Illinois tennis history.

However, Martin said he would rather be remembered for his role off the court than for his accomplishments on the court.

“I was just one of the many guys on the court,” Martin said. “We couldn’t have won a championship without the rest of the team.”

A few more people know his name he said, but clinching the championship was one of the many aspects of Martin’s Illinois career. As a junior, Martin had the highest GPA of any male athlete in his class.

But, Martin’s accolades will not be why he fondly remembers his years as an Illini or returns to Illinois. Instead, it is the family atmosphere Tiley has created among the current athletes, alumni, fans and supporters of the tennis program that will make Martin, Murninghan and Zeder return annually.

“There’s a unity here that no other team has in the country,” Zeder said.

That commitment to the program brings multiple generations of alumni back every year for alumni weekend and motivates recent alumni to appear donning orange and blue at the Big Ten and NCAA Championships, which take place at various sites throughout the country each year.

For Zeder, the family feeling that embraces the Illinois team took a more literal meaning. Zeder’s older brother Nathan was a senior on the team when he was a freshman. They won the last Big Ten title of Nathan’s Illinois career together.

But it was a similar sense of family that convinced Murninghan to join the team when he took his recruiting trip to Illinois as a senior in high school. The trip to Illinois was the last one he took, but by the time Murninghan was ready to leave, he knew there was nowhere else he would rather be than at Illinois.

Since then, he has influenced the team as a soft-spoken leader. He is someone the other Illini feel they can always count on.

“He’s always ready to help you with anything you need,” Illinois junior Ryler DeHeart said.

Over the last four years, Murninghan has suffered through multiple injuries, which has restricted his ability to play. Having such a strong class ahead of them also limited the amount of playing time this year’s seniors have seen in the past. But they are not bitter.

“(The class of 2004) were all great players and the opportunity to play wasn’t as great here as it would have been at other places,” Murninghan said. “But those guys were all great guys – it’s not something I looked down upon. I learned a ton from those guys.”

The seniors said they hope the younger athletes on the team will learn from them as well. All three of the men have grown and changed significantly since they joined the tennis program in the fall of 2001.

Zeder said he learned to focus on the positive aspects of his game while in college. As a junior tennis player, he said that he would get down on himself when points did not go his way. Now, he is one of the team’s spark plugs.

“He gets us riled up before the matches,” DeHeart said. “He is the one that always lightens up the mood with us and makes sure we’re having fun and enjoying ourselves.”

But the path to reach this point has not been easy. Zeder said it takes a lot of work to get to “where you want to be … things just don’t come to you. You have to work hard and do everything you can to create your own opportunities.”

Martin, who recently began competing after being sidelined with a stress fracture in November, said it was during the time away from the sport that he learned some of the most valuable lessons of his career.

“You learn that tennis is such a fragile thing, and there are too many times that I have taken it for granted or haven’t appreciated it as much as I should because you start focusing on the wrong things,” Martin said.

That message never rang more clearly for the team than in September when Illinois associate head coach Brad Dancer was injured in a near-fatal car accident.

“It makes you realize that you have to value the things in your life and you have to value each day,” Martin said. “There are so many things that you don’t have any control over. This team has been through a lot, but whatever happened, we’re certainly doing okay now and maybe we can draw on some of those experiences.”

The men will rally around those experiences in the future as well.

They are searching for their ninth consecutive Big Ten title. They also believe that they have the ability to be successful on the national level, despite losing three All-Americans to graduation. This year’s Illini are led by one of the most dynamic classes in recent years, one that Tiley said he has enjoyed watching grow up.

“I remember when they came in as freshmen, and we watched them develop,” Tiley said. “It’s fun to watch that (growing up) process and be part of that process.”