CHAMPAIGN – Jim Moortgat apparently didn't hold it against a fellow coach for beating him out on a tennis recruit last year.

In fact, the Boise State coach ended up asking her hand in marriage.

"I knew it was going to happen," Jennifer Roberts, University of Illinois women's coach, said Tuesday. "I just didn't know how it was going to happen."

It happened Saturday night at the Gulf Shores, Ala., home of Roberts' parents. Roberts' team was there, too, having been invited over for dinner while on a spring break trip that was wrapping up in Mobile, Ala.

Illini junior Allison Gottlieb knew something was up when Moortgat asked everyone to join Roberts and him in the living room after dinner.

"Jim just made an incredible speech about Jennifer and the time they had spent together, thanked her parents for having him over, and then he proposed," Gottlieb said. "We were so excited and happy for her. Some were crying, and everyone was just glowing."

Roberts' engagement means Gottlieb and her teammates will play for a new coach beginning next fall. Roberts announced Monday she would be relocating to Boise at the end of the season. The wedding's set for June 27.

"It's going to be tough to lose her as a coach because we have such a personal bond with her," UI junior Kara Loffelmacher said, "but we're so happy for her. She means enough to us to look beyond the fact we won't have her."

Although they had yet to meet, Roberts and Moortgat became linked by a common pursuit of current Illini freshman Carla Rosenberg, then the second-ranked prep in Texas.

When Rosenberg informed Moortgat she had chosen Roberts and the UI over his program, he remembers thinking, "Who the heck is Jennifer Roberts, and how did she get Carla Rosenberg away from me?"

The coaches first met last May at the NCAA Championships and then bumped into each other on a recruiting trip to San Jose, Calif.

When Roberts traveled last October to Boise on a recruiting mission that would net Brooke Ferney for next year's team, she and Moortgat met for a dinner that marked the start of their courtship.

"We met and talked, and I thought she was pretty neat," Moortgat said. "We saw each other again at the Orange Bowl (tournament) while recruiting, and everything kind of clicked. You keep hearing people say, 'When it's right, you'll know it,' and I think that was pretty much the case with us."

"Obviously it was a fast romance," said the 37-year-old Roberts, "but once you get to our age, you kind of know what you want and are looking for. Our goals and what we wantout of life are the same, and everything has fallen into place."

Among those goals, Roberts said, will be to start a family. She has no plans, however, to continue to coach tennis.

The 11th-year Illini coach specifically used the word retirement in announcing her decision Monday because she didn't want speculation to arise about the soon-to-be-vacant women's tennis job at Boise State. Moortgat, now in his third year as the BSU women's coach, will leave that position for the men's coaching job next season.

"My career goals since I came to Illinois have been for the Illinois tennis program, and I knew this would be my last college tennis position," said Roberts, who twice captained UI women's tennis teams in the early 1980s. "When I came back to my alma mater, I was really invested in the girls in the program and the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics.

"I knew the only thing that could get me to leave here would be a situation that personally was better for me."

Last time around

The career record of Illinois women's tennis coach Jennifer Roberts, who announced Monday she is stepping down at the end of this season:

Years, Record, Win%, Big Ten

1987-88, 10-17, .370, 10th

1988-89, 6-22, .214, 7th

1989-90, 15-14, .517, 8th

1990-91, 19-9, .679, 5th

1991-92, 16-8, .667, 4th

1992-93, 14-6, .700, 3rd

1993-94, 13-9, .590, 5th

1994-95, 14-10, .583, 6th

1995-96, 12-14, .461, 7th

1996-97, 11-14, .440, 6th

1997-98, *5-9, .357, 1-3

Totals, 11 years, 135-133, .504

*Through Tuesday