Missouri Valley / St. Louis

From player to national champion coach, Madara’s WashU journey comes full circle

David Smale | October 13, 2025

In celebration of National Coach Appreciation Month taking place this October, USTA St. Louis is highlighting Paige Madara.

Tennis, as much as any sport and more than most sports, is all about serving and receiving service. For Paige Madara, the women’s tennis head coach at Washington University in St. Louis, she’s enjoying the “serving” side after years of being on the “receiving service” side.

“I really fell in love with this community when I was a student at WashU,” she said. “My first-year writing professor came and watched my matches in my senior year. It’s that type of community.

“I felt so supported that I could go and do whatever I wanted, and I would be supported by the people in the community. To me, that was so special. It taught me how to invest in people by helping them with their development. That really shaped who I am as a coach.”

Madara is the head coach of the defending national champions, as WashU won its first Division III national title in women’s tennis last spring. The Bears defeated Pomona-Pitzer 4-3 in the title match to cap a dream run that included a 4-3 win over No. 1-ranked University of Chicago in the Elite 8.

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Return to her Roots

Madara is originally from Dublin, Ohio, just outside of Columbus. She played four years of tennis at WashU for coach Kelly Stahlhuth.

The highlight for Madara was reaching the NCAA quarterfinals in her senior year when she won the clinching match. After that match, her teammates rushed the court. She had done that numerous times for teammates, so it was special to be on the receiving end.

After graduating, she served as a graduate assistant for Stahlhuth for two years before coaching at Washington & Lee University for one season. Madara accepted the head coaching position at Grinnell College in Iowa where she coached men and women.

She came back to WashU in the fall of 2020. She feels like she’s in her element.

WashU topped Pomona-Pitzer 4-3 in the NCAA Tournament finals to capture the program's first women's tennis national championship this past May.

Paige Madara (center) competed at WashU as a player and now leads the Bears as the program's head coach.

Paige Madara (right) alongside assistant coach Erin Swaller, who is also a WashU alum and a St. Louis native.

WashU topped Pomona-Pitzer 4-3 in the NCAA Tournament finals to capture the program's first women's tennis national championship this past May.
Paige Madara (center) competed at WashU as a player and now leads the Bears as the program's head coach.
Paige Madara (right) alongside assistant coach Erin Swaller, who is also a WashU alum and a St. Louis native.

“There are no athletic scholarships in Division III, so people play their sport because they love it,” Madara said. “They love being a part of a team. There are moments that it’s hard because school is hard. It’s very demanding academically at WashU, but you play because you love it. Tennis is that joyful part of your day.”

Faith in the Team

It’s certainly more joyful when you win at the national stage, something the Bears did for the first time in school history. It’s one of the school’s 27 national championships.

Madara said she knew her team was special at the beginning of the season. The Bears reached the Elite 8 the previous season for the first time since 2017. She looked at the talent and makeup of the team and told them on the first day of practice they had a chance to be special.

“I looked at them and said, ‘We are the best team in the country this year, and we are capable of winning this whole thing.’ When I told them that, they looked at me and laughed,” Madara said. “I told them it was going to be a process, but we had a lot of work to do. But I knew we had the right people in our program, and we had the talent.”

It didn’t happen right away. The Bears finished seventh out of eight teams at the indoor national championship. They split the next six matches, including a road trip to Atlanta where they lost a close match to No. 3 Emory University. Madara believes that’s when the switch flipped.

They lost to the conference’s top team and the defending national champion, UChicago, in the tournament semifinals, which was their last loss of the season. Despite the loss, they were confident they could beat UChicago, which they did in the national quarterfinals. They knocked off No. 9 Johns Hopkins in the semifinals.

Madara didn’t have to say “I told you so” to the team, because a freshman beat her to it.

“When we won the title one of my freshmen, Ally Lin, turned and walked over to me and said: ‘Coach, you told us we could do this. You believed in us from the beginning when we were losing. You told us on day one.’ I said, ‘I knew you could do it,’” Madara said.

“I felt like our team really cared and had each other’s best interest in heart. They learned that it’s special to be a part of a team.”

The Bears are loaded this year with the entire starting lineup back. But nothing is guaranteed.

“The last few years we were the hunters,” Madara said. “Now we’ll be the hunted.”

Just like Madara is no longer the served, but the server.

Check out additional Coach Appreciation Month feature stories from across USTA Missouri Valley by clicking here. Learn more about USTA Coaching by clicking here.

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