For an athlete riding a team-best five-game winning streak, Chelsea Nusslock is surprisingly humble and refreshingly soft-spoken.

“I’ve gotten there [because of] my coaches,” the freshman tennis player said. “Definitely by the help of my teammates … and my family really supported me.”

Nusslock possesses a powerful serve, vicious forehand and rather admirable net play, all of which have helped propel her to wins against opponents representing then-number five Northwestern and then-No. 22 Brigham Young University in matches where the majority of her teammates came up empty. Yet for Nusslock, who has been dominant out of sixth flight singles all season, boasting doesn’t come naturally and a genuinely modest demeanor seems to only add to her character off the court.

But on the court, it is an entirely different story.

“She’s an amazing fighter on the court, she will never give up,” teammate Katie McGaffigan said. “Especially in practice, she’s always giving 100 percent, which is amazing.”

“She’s really feisty on the court,” teammate Caitlin Burke (ranked No. 92 at press time) said, echoing McGaffigan. “She loves competition, loves to play and really wants to win.”

But for Burke, a sophomore representing the Badgers in second-flight singles, Nusslock was a familiar face long before she ventured to the University of Wisconsin.

“We grew up playing together,” Burke says. “We actually played 12 doubles together in the Midwest tournament. So I knew her all growing up and played doubles for a few years together.”

Needless to say, Nusslock has matured considerably since her first encounter with Burke.

“She’s definitely a little bigger, she’s grown a little bit,” Burke laughingly said of the difference between Nusslock at age 12 and now. “She was so small when she was 12.”

When first working with Burke in her pre-teen years, Nusslock was relatively new to the sport, having only started playing competitively a couple of years before. Indeed, for the freshman Badger, tennis came only as an interest in gymnastics dwindled.

“I wanted to do gymnastics,” Nusslock said. “I did it for like 9 years. And then I played a little bit of tennis at my winter club camp. And then I had to choose between gymnastics and tennis and I figured tennis could go a lot longer in life than gymnastics could.”

Of her interest in tennis, Nusslock once again points to her parents, who have become regular sights in the audience of Nielsen Tennis Stadium for the Badgers’ home matches this year, regularly making the drive up from Lake Forest, Ill.

“My parents always thought it was good to have tennis, golf and skiing,” Nusslock said, adding, “Because they’re lifetime sports.”

But when it comes to gauging just how her talent on the court will play out during that lifetime, Nusslock prefers to keep her eyes on the short-term.

“I haven’t really thought past college yet,” she said.

With her concentration on Wisconsin tennis, though, Nusslock’s goals are a unique blend of the fiery ambition she displays on the court and the relative humility with which she speaks when not playing.

“I want to progress. I want to move up,” the freshman Badger said. “And I want to earn a ranking and move up in the rankings.”

When not representing Wisconsin in tennis, Nusslock is a freshman still adjusting to the rigors of a collegiate workload coupled with the demands of being a student-athlete.
“First semester it went well,” Nusslock said of her schoolwork. “I was doing a lot of studying. I didn’t know exactly what the right techniques for studying are, I was doing a little too much, not cutting out stuff I didn’t really need to do. I think this semester, I’m doing a little bit better with time management.”

Citing a love for mathematics and its creative application, the Milwaukee native hopes to turn all of those hours in the library into an admission in Wisconsin’s business school. But as a freshman, that is an application Nusslock is yet to fill out, having just recently finished her high school work and completed a college acceptance process that was always UW-centric.

“My parents are originally from Wisconsin … and they went to Madison,” Nusslock said. “And my grandparents and all my relatives went to Madison pretty much. So I’ve just always wanted to go to Madison; I’ve never really thought of anywhere else. And it’s one of the best schools.”

With Nusslock on the court for the next four years, Wisconsin also promises to preserve its reputation as claiming one of the best women’s tennis teams in the Midwest. Her teammates speak of her in universally flattering terms, her winning streak is beginning to truly speak for itself and with the rigors of practice and her game seems to be constantly improving.

“She’s been doing a great job,” head coach Patti Henderson said. “She steps on to the singles court and she’s a great competitor.”