After winning the doubles competition at the ITA Midwest Regional, Kate Duong and Megan Heuser will travel to San Diego for the ITA National Fall Championships on Wednesday. The pair's victory was the first by an Illinois duo since 2012, while they are just the third Illini tandem in program history to win a regional title and the first to advance to nationals.

Duong and Heuser started competing together in doubles last season, and they instantly connected. Head coach Evan Clark uses fall competition to experiment with doubles pairings, but he could tell the Duong/Heuser duo would work early into the year.

Clark says their personalities and playing styles created instant chemistry, but it was Heuser who approached her head coach to advocate for their partnership.

"I sat down with Coach, and I was like, 'I think me and Kate would be great together,' Heuser said. "We both complement each other's games very well. She's solid from the baseline, very solid at the net, and she can set me up very easily. She just has a lot of strengths in her game that work with my strengths, and we both balance each other out. She's just a great doubles partner, both on the court and off the court, a great friend, and a great teammate as well."

While Heuser headed into college as a strong doubles player, Duong prided herself as being better at singles. In her first season at Illinois in 2021, Duong went 14-8 in singles play and 13-9 in doubles competition while playing with three different partners.

When Duong got the opportunity to team up with Heuser, who is one year younger, she knew their partnership was much different from any pairing she had previously been in.

"I think Megan is one of the best doubles players that I've played with," Duong said. "I was really excited to play with her because I knew that she was a very solid doubles player coming in and I could learn a lot from her. I've played with some other doubles players where we have a very similar game style, so sometimes it doesn't work in doubles. I like to assist people. I like to set people up. If I have another person that plays like that, then it's kind of tough to win points. 

"I think since we do complement each other well, that's why it was able to work out."

It was not smooth sailing in the early stages last year, though, as the pair faced some rough seas in the fall and early spring seasons. Both underclassmen during the 2021-22 season, with Duong a sophomore and Heuser a freshman, the pair lost in their first two dual-meet doubles matches, but they flipped the switch and got into a groove soon after, winning six of their next eight matches. 

Despite being relatively inexperienced at the collegiate level, Duong and Heuser played on Court 1 and kept that top spot, finishing their first year as a duo with a 13-8 doubles record while going 6-3 in conference play.

Their success trickles down to the rest of the team, Clark says, and it played a big factor in the Illini earning a five-seed in the Big Ten tournament.

"It gives obviously those two a ton of confidence, and it gives the rest of the team a ton of confidence," Clark said. "Those higher spots are tough. Everybody's good. Everyone's got good players. When we have a team that has proven that they can play at the highest level, then it helps the trickle down effect to all the other spots."

Now, with a full season under their belts, both players feel like their individual skill and collective play have grown tremendously. Duong says she now plays with more confidence at the net, while Heuser's baseline play and mental strength have allowed her to take the next step in her sophomore season.

Those improvements led to success last weekend at the ITA Midwest Regionals. Though both players lost in singles play, their focus moved solely to doubles competition. After earning a first-round bye, the pair defeated teams from Toledo, Marquette, Michigan, and Northwestern to advance to the finals. With a trip to nationals already secured, Duong and Heuser took down a second Michigan duo to take home the doubles championship.

The Orange and Blue pairing says they played "the most in sync" than ever before, earning a somewhat unexpected trip to the ITA Fall National Championships.

"I had no expectations coming in. I didn't know what was gonna happen," Heuser said. "We were not favored to win. We were not favored to make it far. We were not favored to do anything in doubles at all. It's very rewarding because we were the underdogs. No one expected us to come out and win the tournament. No one expected us to beat the teams that we beat. No one expected us to do any of these things that we did, but we just proved them all wrong and that's something that we have strived to work for. 

"Nobody knows who we are. The fact that we just came out and we just won regionals just shows how great of a team we really are and how much more we can do with our abilities. I think this is just the beginning of what could possibly be."

Duong lost in the first round in singles, but she stayed focused and put all your energy and effort into doubles play. She refused to let the early defeat get to her, and she put all her marbles into making sure she did not endure the same fate in doubles.

"After my singles loss, it was a really hard loss and I was really upset with myself, so I had to turn that into something positive," Duong said. "I knew if I performed well in doubles, that would definitely help overturn my feelings about singles. I would definitely be happier throughout the tournament, as long as I still was in doubles. 

"We just put all of our like negative feelings behind us, and we told ourselves that we were going to be solid. We didn't really have to do anything exciting. We just had to be good players on the court, good doubles players, and that's how we were going to win, and that ended up happening."

Duong and Heuser will begin nationals competition on Wednesday, representing the Orange and Blue on the West Coast. 

While the Illini duo has already proven people wrong and announced themselves on the national stage, they do not plan on slowing down or remaining satisfied with just a regional title.

"I think we're just going to have fun with it," Duong said. "We didn't expect to make this tournament, but we're gonna go out there and we're going to do our best. We know the competition there is going to be insane. It's going to be a very, very high competitive level, so everyone's going to be good. We just have to go in there and play our game. 

"We're just going to go out there, be free, and play our best tennis. Whatever happens, happens."