In addition to the pressure of her match, Vigna felt some outside pressure: her teammates were faltering.
"I remember looking around and I saw that everyone on my team was losing," Vigna says. "It was so depressing: I thought we were going to lose and not go to the NCAA tournament. But luckily we all turned around."
Vigna enjoys the comraderie of collegiate tennis and thinks that this comraderie is only enhanced by the type of gutsy performance she pulled off against Yale.
"Anyone who comes back inspires me because we're all so close and supportive," she says. "It's like a domino effect."
Vigna's style of play depends on concentration. She is able to block out the pressure, the taunts of unfriendly crowds and the antics of her opponents.
"When I see people getting upset, it just looks terrible," she says. "I think you really give a lot away when you show emotion, even when it's excited emotion. It also disrupts your concentration. I like to be on an even flow in whatever I do."
This even flow that Vigna exhibits on the court even inspired her nickname: "Machine."
"When I go and play, I just play," Vigna says. "[Harvard Coach] Ed [Krass] will never come and talk to me between games because when I play, I'm in my own little world. My assistant coach a couple of years ago started calling me a machine."
The nickname stuck, and her teammates--especially doubles partner Cyndy Austrian--can be heard urging her on, using the nickname, during her matches.
"She's the best," says Austrian. "She's the greatest inspirator, she's got the best attitude, and she sets the best example for the team. The first week of the year I was asked to write down who my inspirations in sports are. I put down Bjorn Borg, Larry Bird and The Machine."
Vigna says that the highlight of her career came when she won two titles (singles and doubles) at the Eastern Championships last year. "It was the best thing I've ever won. It was a goal that I've had for a long time," she says.
Despite her collegiate success Vigna does not entertain thoughts of becoming a professional.
"I love tennis, but I can't stand when people take the game so seriously that they burn out," she says. "When you have to play every day and have to win to survive, it becomes a job, and it takes all the fun out of it."
Vigna, an economics major and Quincy House resident, is instead looking forward to a life outside of tennis, and will try her hand at commercial banking. But she would like to go about it with the same calm determination with which she plays her game.
"I'd like to stay back East, in either Vermont or New Hampshire," she says. "It's my kind of environment, very slow and relaxed."
Should Kathy Vigna find success later in life, you might have difficulty finding the momentos given as rewards. But you can never put success in a box.