Now in her third full season as the Wentworth Institute of Technology Head Women’s Tennis Coach, Erin Phillips has built a solid foundation which she hopes will carry her team into the postseason for the first time since 2009.

The 2014-15 season saw the Leopards finish at 3-11 with three of those losses coming by a 5-4 score, including a season-ending loss to Western New England which kept the Black & Gold out of the Commonwealth Coast Conference Tournament. In the spring season Wentworth placed second at the UMass Boston Invitational.

In her first full season, she guided the Black & Gold to a 5-8 record, with the five wins being the most since the 2009 campaign.

Phillips was hired to coach the team during the spring of 2013 and guided the team at the Regis Invitational.

Phillips, who is also an assistant women’s basketball coach at the Institute, earned her undergraduate degree in history from Salve Regina University in 2011. For the Seahawk basketball and tennis programs, she made history as her and her teammates enjoyed two trips to the NCAA Championships during her four-year basketball career.

For her three years with the women’s tennis program, Phillips played No. 1 singles and No. 1 doubles. She was a first-team all-conference singles player each season and made all-conference doubles all three years with two different partners. In her final season, Phillips competed with Ana Gwozdz in ITA regionals after the Seahawk pair had won the Flight A bracket at the Women’s Grass Court Doubles Championships hosted by Salve Regina at the Tennis Hall of Fame.

On the hardwood, she was the second-leading scorer on the Seahawk squad that entered the conference tournament as the fifth seed and won three straight games on the road to capture the league championship during her sophomore season. The next year, she became only the second junior to reach the 1,000-point milestone. For her senior season, Phillips and her teammates went unbeaten in conference regular season and then won three games at home for another league championship. That Seahawk squad fashioned a school-record 20-game win streak.

Phillips was named the conference’s Player of the Year and later earned ECAC All-New England accolades as well as d3hoops.com All-Region recognition. She finished her career as the school’s second all-time leading scorer (1,498 points). This included a game-high 22 points in the first-round of the NCAA Championships at Bowdoin College.

As the school’s female athlete of the year (2010-11), Phillips also was honored by the Rhode Island Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (RIAIAW) with the Distinguished Student Athlete award. Twice she was selected as Division III Player of the Year for women’s basketball by Cox Sports Rhode Island Media.

(Updated:  8/21/15)