Nondorf arrived in 2009, and since that point, UChicago Men’s tennis has become a veritable powerhouse. Prior to his arrival, the team was generally pitiful - many losing seasons, middling performances, etc. Since his arrival, the team’s only had two mediocre seasons (going 11-9) and seven outstanding seasons (including this season, where they are ranked #1 in the country!).
The shift, at least in men’s tennis, pre-nondorf and post-nondorf, is pretty clear to see. All of a sudden, top D3 tennis players flocked to Chicago.
There may or may not be any connection. Perhaps the men’s tennis team got a new coach the year Nondorf arrived. Since it takes a few years of superior recruiting before an improvement in a sports team is noticed, the 15-6 record in 2009-10 would not seem to be related to Nondorf’s arrival in 2009.
The turnaround in men’s tennis was showing by the 2004 (18-10) season and the 2007-8 season (13-8). Seasons from 1998 through 2003 were all losing. From 2004 onward all were winning. So the turnaround could be put at 2004, well before Nondorf’s arrival.
There are dozens of areas where pre- and post-Nondorf outcomes at the university can be examined. To explore one of many possible areas of difference, declare it as significant, and to expect a connection with an outside event (Nondorf’s arrival) may be data mining or p-hacking.
When we attended a local visit day for my D17 three years ago, I chatted with the admissions officers. They told me in no uncertain terms that the goal was to restore the College to its early glory days in terms of size, prestige and stuff like athletics (among other EC’s). There was room to grow pretty much everywhere - at the time (they seem to have reached the size goal at this point). Whether Nondorf is a cause of the notably better tennis program is debatable. But whether the correlation is due to underlying drivers by Zimmerman and Team is probably far less so.
There is almost certainly a connection, but it’s not likely that Nondorf is responsible. More likely it’s a combination of John Boyer, Don Randel, Robert Zimmer, the Board of Trustees, a succession of Athletic Directors, and some luck. And, in the case of the tennis team, whoever the coach is or has been.
It has been a goal of the University for decades to improve the quality of undergraduate student life and undergraduate (and alumni) attachment to the College. Fielding competitive varsity sports teams has been seen as one of many means for approaching that goal. More aggressive recruitment of athletes started before Zimmer became president and well before he hired Nondorf as Dean of Admissions. It has been continuing during their regime, significantly helped, I’m sure, by all the other things they have done to make Chicago more attractive to college applicants.
It probably helped somewhat that, until recently at least, no one felt the need to offer Chicago’s tennis coach half a million dollars to waste a recruiting slot on someone who was never going to win a tennis match in college.