After a solid season that came to an abrupt end in the quarterfinals of the Big Ten tournament, Illinois women’s tennis will look to bounce back next year. However, as this young team looks to improve with their recruiting class, so far only Violeta Martinez leads the class solo.

Martinez is an unranked recruit from Port Saint Lucie, Florida and is the only recruit for the Illini’s recruiting class so far. She will be coming to the University from the Rafael Nadal International School. 

This recruiting class comes a year after the Illini had a 24th-ranked top recruiting class in 2021 with two 5-star recruits and one 4-star recruit. Now the team will look to Martinez to be a new spark in the team for next season.

Martinez has proven herself a top recruit,being ranked in the top 20 by tennisrecruiting.net. It will be interesting to see how this new recruit meshes with the already fairly young women’s tennis team. With the core freshman contingent helping the team gain so many wins last season, head coach Evan Clark has shown that if a young player has the talent, they will start for the Illini roster.

While the incoming class appears somewhat lackluster in quantity so far, there is still plenty of time to bring in fresh faces in addition to Martinez. Additionally, the big offseason recruiting during the summer of 2021 solved the problem of what was an aging squad that had lost four seniors that same year. Freshmen Megan Heuser, Kasia Treiber and Kida Ferrari all played significant time this past spring, proving their worth to the program. Illinois women’s tennis is already in good hands, and the addition of Martinez will only strengthen the depth of the roster moving forward.

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