Nothing is certain in life, but one thing that is guaranteed in the life of a college student is having a lengthy orientation, and Bradley is no exception.
Some freshmen got ready for their new life as college students fairly close to home with a few recognizable faces. Others had a new team, new school and a new city to get used to.
Hailing from Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, chemistry major and Bradley tennis player Bozana Lojpur was waiting for her next lecture to begin in what was already a very long day of orientation.
All of a sudden, a girl she had never met started to approach her.
“Are you Bozana?” international studies major Nikki Perlwitz, a native of Weston, Florida, asked.
Lojpur looked at her and said “Yes,” a little taken aback, as not many people call her Bozana; they usually refer to her as “Bo.”
“I’m Nikki, one of the freshmen on the team; do you wanna come sit with us?” Perlwitz said, pointing to Mayu Tezuka, another freshman on the tennis team who would eventually transfer away from Bradley.
As Lojpur accepted the invitation and hurried to meet her new teammates, she didn’t exactly know what she was getting into, but she would soon find out that the girl that just approached her would share many memories with her in the near future.
Many wins would follow, so too would many stolen AirPods and towers made of Froot Loop towers.
Turn the clocks forward to the present, and Lojpur and Perlwitz have had their names written into the record books as one of the best doubles teams in school history,
During their time at Bradley, the pair has the best winning percentage in program history, largely in part to a .667 mark in the 2020-21 season for doubles.
Both individually and as a duo, they are a force to be reckoned with.
Lojpur has recorded 63 career singles wins, placing her in fifth place in school history and Perlwitz, never far behind Lojpur, has won 61 matches which puts her currently in sixth.
Together, Lojpur and Perlwitz have racked up 40 career doubles victories, which places them at the fourth spot on the table. The duo are three wins away from claiming the most doubles wins in program history.
While their current playing record is very impressive, head coach Matt Tyler was initially skeptical of Lojpur and Perlwitz playing together. He had doubts about the chemistry of the tandem, and their overall unimpressive playing record during their freshman year didn’t help.
“When we first put them together when they were freshmen, I wasn’t sure that was going to work out,” Tyler said.
While Lojpur, the 2019 MVC Freshman of the Year, and Perlwitz, an All-MVC pick in 2021 were good friends on and off the court, friendship doesn’t always translate into a good partnership.
According to Tyler, they are polar opposites, with Lojpur being a highly intense person on the tennis court and Perlwitz being more easy-going.
“In other words, I have anger management issues and she doesn’t care,” Lojpur said as she laughed along with Perlwitz.
Although Tyler refers to Perlwitz as the easygoing one of the tandem, she refers to herself as the “menace” of the group. She will often be spit-balling the coaches, building little towers of Froot Loops on their shoulders and hiding their AirPods during the long trips they take to matches.
“Coach [Tyler] will ask where his AirPods are at and say ‘Give them to me now!’, and she’ll say something like ‘Coach, I swear I don’t have them,’” Lojpur said. “She became a very good liar because of these pranks.”
At first, it seemed that Tyler had been correct in his assumptions about Lojpur and Perlwitz, as they only won three matches in their first season as doubles partners. In this case, it seems time and experience are the greatest teachers as Lojpur and Perlwitz learned to play as a duo.
“We’re in sync now; I know when she’s going to go for a ball, she knows when I’m going to go for a ball,” Perlwitz said.
“Four years of playing together, they know each other, they know what to expect out of each other and can help each other,” Tyler said. “Originally I didn’t think they would be a good team, but I guess probably a year and a half ago, I changed my mind.”
It’s a good thing he did, as Lojpur and Perlwitz have won MVC Doubles Team of the Week twice already in the spring season. The Braves have taken home the honor four times this year, a feat that had never been accomplished by Bradley tennis before.
“I honestly am really happy I can have a best friend and a teammate at the same time who I get along with really well and we just kind of understand each other on the court,” Lojpur said. “I think Nikki and I have never been stronger as a doubles team.”
