‘These Championships Don’t Come Easily’
May 30, 2025 | Women's Tennis, The Frierson Files
By John Frierson
Staff Writer
After capping an extraordinary Georgia women's tennis season with the program's first NCAA team title since 2000, Drake Bernstein knows not to take anything for granted, especially national championships.
A lifelong Bulldog fan who grew up in Winder, 30 minutes away from the Dan Magill Tennis Complex, Bernstein was a freshman on men's tennis' 2008 NCAA championship team. It was the Bulldogs' second title in a row, and it was natural for Bernstein to think that he'd be hoisting another big trophy before his playing days were done.
"Trust me, as a freshman, I walked in and it was just, we'll go to Tulsa and we'll win the NCAA title, because that's what we do. We do that, and then you're like, we'll do it again next year, but it's just not like that," he said.
The men's tennis team contended for NCAA titles during the rest of Bernstein's playing career, but wasn't able to capture another. The men have regularly been in the hunt in the years since, and have won 10 SEC regular-season or tournament championships in that time, but that next NCAA crown has remained elusive.
On the women's side, Jeff Wallace led his program to NCAA titles in 1994 and 2000, and Georgia was among the nation's elite pretty much every year after that. But it wasn't until this spring, two years after Wallace's retirement and Bernstein's promotion to head coach, that the Bulldogs won the program's third NCAA team title.
"These championships don't come easily, and they don't come without work, and they take time," Bernstein said.
After 2000, women's tennis did win three ITA National Indoor championships, including earlier this year, along with 15 SEC regular-season or tournament titles. Last spring, Bernstein's first as head coach after many years as Wallace's assistant or associate head coach, Georgia shared the SEC regular-season title with Texas A&M, beat A&M to win the SEC tournament, and then lost to the Aggies in the finals of the NCAAs.
Like he said, these things don't come easily.
Bernstein said he's "looking forward to digesting it all" over the summer, but don't think for a second that he's going operate any differently now that the Bulldogs are again NCAA champions. That's not who Bernstein is. And he'd rather you didn't try to make Georgia's success the past two seasons about him.
While Bernstein, Wallace's righthand man for 11 seasons before taking over, helped recruit and develop Georgia's players, especially this season's senior core of Dasha Vidmanova, Mell Reasco and Guillermina Grant, this was a team effort in every way possible, he said.
"I feel like it gets a lot of attention, the success that we've had my first two years as head coach, but it's just so much bigger than that. That's an oversimplification, saying that it's the head coach," he said. "This is a full group effort. You have the players in the locker room, and they deserve all of the credit for what's taken place over the last two years. Their last two years have been magical."
One thing Bernstein can take credit for is surrounding himself with the best people possible. Associate head coach Jarryd Chaplin has helped transform Georgia's doubles play into one of the program's best strengths — Georgia won the doubles point 27 times in 32 matches in 2025 — and assistant coach Will Reynolds, a former teammate of Bernstein's at Georgia, is the glue guy, "a voice that the players can trust that's always there." Add in former Georgia All-American Kate (Fuller) Chambless, who runs the office and handles a million details, and it's a group that works very well together.
"If there's anything that is a well-oiled machine," Bernstein said, "it's how the staff works together. Every decision that I make comes with the input of pretty much everybody else on the staff."
Last spring, Vidmanova and then-freshman Aysegul Mert teamed up to win the program's first NCAA doubles title, while Anastasiia Lopata, a sophomore who'd played at No. 4 singles most of the year, reached the singles final. In the fall, Vidmanova became Georgia's fourth NCAA singles champion, and with the team title the Bulldogs won on May 18, Vidmanova became just the third woman ever to win all three NCAA crowns in her career.
Georgia had the deepest team in the country, with players throughout the lineup capable of rising to the occasion every time it was needed. Grant, Georgia's No. 5 player in singles and part of the No. 2 doubles team with Lopata, was the MVP of the ITA National Indoor Championships. She played three singles matches and three doubles matches and won them all.
Here are some singles records to illustrate just how rock-solid Georgia was in dual-match competition: Grant went 20-3, Lopata 14-1, Mert 20-2, Vidmanova 20-4, and Sofia Rojas, the only new player in this spring's lineup, who delivered the clinching win in the NCAA finals against A&M, went 19-4. Reasco's singles record was only 7-8, but she spent the season working her way back from hip surgery and didn't lose once in the final month of the season. She also was part of the top-ranked doubles team in the country with Vidmanova.
"We don't set out say this player or this team can do this or that," Bernstein said when asked if he knew several years back that he was assembling a championship roster. "There are so many unknowns. ... You have no crystal ball for predicting dynamics and development."
Speaking of crystal balls and development, let's not forget that the Drake Bernstein Era didn't exactly get off to a rousing start in the 2024 dual-match season. There was never any doubt that Bernstein's Bulldogs were going to do great things eventually, but Georgia, the preseason No. 3, opened its season with a 7-0 loss at top-ranked North Carolina.
The Bulldogs followed that with wins over South Florida and South Carolina, and then 4-3 losses at No. 10 Texas and against No. 12 Ohio State in the ITA National Indoors. Yes, Bernstein and the Bulldogs were 2-3 as of Feb. 9, 2024. They've gone 52-5 since, including 6-2 against Texas A&M, which would be the dominant team in the SEC and the country if Georgia wasn't in its way.
Georgia played nine matches in the 2025 postseason, three in the SEC tournament and six in the NCAAs. The Bulldogs won seven of them 4-0. Their 4-1 win over Duke in the quarterfinals was their only non-shutout of the NCAA tournament. Some of those individual wins were blowouts, sure, but many of them were tight two- and three-set matches that the Bulldogs found ways to win. The coaches had the players ready, and the players got it done.
"It's not about me, it's about Georgia, and that's really the best part of it all," Bernstein said. "It's that we get to do this — the entire staff, the players — that we got to do this for something that's not just ourselves. It's bigger than ourselves. Sure, this is an accomplishment that we'll be proud of for the rest of our lives, but the fact that we got to bring this back to Georgia is the coolest part of it all.
"Hands down for me, it's the coolest part of it all."
Staff Writer
After capping an extraordinary Georgia women's tennis season with the program's first NCAA team title since 2000, Drake Bernstein knows not to take anything for granted, especially national championships.
A lifelong Bulldog fan who grew up in Winder, 30 minutes away from the Dan Magill Tennis Complex, Bernstein was a freshman on men's tennis' 2008 NCAA championship team. It was the Bulldogs' second title in a row, and it was natural for Bernstein to think that he'd be hoisting another big trophy before his playing days were done.
"Trust me, as a freshman, I walked in and it was just, we'll go to Tulsa and we'll win the NCAA title, because that's what we do. We do that, and then you're like, we'll do it again next year, but it's just not like that," he said.
The men's tennis team contended for NCAA titles during the rest of Bernstein's playing career, but wasn't able to capture another. The men have regularly been in the hunt in the years since, and have won 10 SEC regular-season or tournament championships in that time, but that next NCAA crown has remained elusive.
On the women's side, Jeff Wallace led his program to NCAA titles in 1994 and 2000, and Georgia was among the nation's elite pretty much every year after that. But it wasn't until this spring, two years after Wallace's retirement and Bernstein's promotion to head coach, that the Bulldogs won the program's third NCAA team title.
"These championships don't come easily, and they don't come without work, and they take time," Bernstein said.
After 2000, women's tennis did win three ITA National Indoor championships, including earlier this year, along with 15 SEC regular-season or tournament titles. Last spring, Bernstein's first as head coach after many years as Wallace's assistant or associate head coach, Georgia shared the SEC regular-season title with Texas A&M, beat A&M to win the SEC tournament, and then lost to the Aggies in the finals of the NCAAs.
Like he said, these things don't come easily.
Bernstein said he's "looking forward to digesting it all" over the summer, but don't think for a second that he's going operate any differently now that the Bulldogs are again NCAA champions. That's not who Bernstein is. And he'd rather you didn't try to make Georgia's success the past two seasons about him.
While Bernstein, Wallace's righthand man for 11 seasons before taking over, helped recruit and develop Georgia's players, especially this season's senior core of Dasha Vidmanova, Mell Reasco and Guillermina Grant, this was a team effort in every way possible, he said.
"I feel like it gets a lot of attention, the success that we've had my first two years as head coach, but it's just so much bigger than that. That's an oversimplification, saying that it's the head coach," he said. "This is a full group effort. You have the players in the locker room, and they deserve all of the credit for what's taken place over the last two years. Their last two years have been magical."
One thing Bernstein can take credit for is surrounding himself with the best people possible. Associate head coach Jarryd Chaplin has helped transform Georgia's doubles play into one of the program's best strengths — Georgia won the doubles point 27 times in 32 matches in 2025 — and assistant coach Will Reynolds, a former teammate of Bernstein's at Georgia, is the glue guy, "a voice that the players can trust that's always there." Add in former Georgia All-American Kate (Fuller) Chambless, who runs the office and handles a million details, and it's a group that works very well together.
"If there's anything that is a well-oiled machine," Bernstein said, "it's how the staff works together. Every decision that I make comes with the input of pretty much everybody else on the staff."
Last spring, Vidmanova and then-freshman Aysegul Mert teamed up to win the program's first NCAA doubles title, while Anastasiia Lopata, a sophomore who'd played at No. 4 singles most of the year, reached the singles final. In the fall, Vidmanova became Georgia's fourth NCAA singles champion, and with the team title the Bulldogs won on May 18, Vidmanova became just the third woman ever to win all three NCAA crowns in her career.
Georgia had the deepest team in the country, with players throughout the lineup capable of rising to the occasion every time it was needed. Grant, Georgia's No. 5 player in singles and part of the No. 2 doubles team with Lopata, was the MVP of the ITA National Indoor Championships. She played three singles matches and three doubles matches and won them all.
Here are some singles records to illustrate just how rock-solid Georgia was in dual-match competition: Grant went 20-3, Lopata 14-1, Mert 20-2, Vidmanova 20-4, and Sofia Rojas, the only new player in this spring's lineup, who delivered the clinching win in the NCAA finals against A&M, went 19-4. Reasco's singles record was only 7-8, but she spent the season working her way back from hip surgery and didn't lose once in the final month of the season. She also was part of the top-ranked doubles team in the country with Vidmanova.
"We don't set out say this player or this team can do this or that," Bernstein said when asked if he knew several years back that he was assembling a championship roster. "There are so many unknowns. ... You have no crystal ball for predicting dynamics and development."
Speaking of crystal balls and development, let's not forget that the Drake Bernstein Era didn't exactly get off to a rousing start in the 2024 dual-match season. There was never any doubt that Bernstein's Bulldogs were going to do great things eventually, but Georgia, the preseason No. 3, opened its season with a 7-0 loss at top-ranked North Carolina.
The Bulldogs followed that with wins over South Florida and South Carolina, and then 4-3 losses at No. 10 Texas and against No. 12 Ohio State in the ITA National Indoors. Yes, Bernstein and the Bulldogs were 2-3 as of Feb. 9, 2024. They've gone 52-5 since, including 6-2 against Texas A&M, which would be the dominant team in the SEC and the country if Georgia wasn't in its way.
Georgia played nine matches in the 2025 postseason, three in the SEC tournament and six in the NCAAs. The Bulldogs won seven of them 4-0. Their 4-1 win over Duke in the quarterfinals was their only non-shutout of the NCAA tournament. Some of those individual wins were blowouts, sure, but many of them were tight two- and three-set matches that the Bulldogs found ways to win. The coaches had the players ready, and the players got it done.
"It's not about me, it's about Georgia, and that's really the best part of it all," Bernstein said. "It's that we get to do this — the entire staff, the players — that we got to do this for something that's not just ourselves. It's bigger than ourselves. Sure, this is an accomplishment that we'll be proud of for the rest of our lives, but the fact that we got to bring this back to Georgia is the coolest part of it all.
"Hands down for me, it's the coolest part of it all."
Assistant Sports Communications Director John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files.
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