colleen clery ferrell

Growing up in Yakima, Washington, Angie Crawford was athletic but had not yet discovered tennis.  She was a three-sport athlete in high school and a two-sport athlete in college, excelling in volleyball, basketball, and track.  She is now finding out that each one of those sports has great transfer skills for tennis.  Angie was first introduced to tennis at NAS Miramar in 1989 by her then boyfriend, now husband. She tried tennis but wasn’t crazy about it at first.  Her husband kept encouraging Angie to play, but it took some time to get hooked.  In 2010 after a 20-year hiatus, she started hitting again and decided to try a singles flex league.  This new group of tennis friends encouraged Angie to join a club and keep participating in various leagues.  She has been improving at tennis ever since.

Angie represents the type of player that the NWTO is now seeing as a building block of the organization.  She competes in league play and occasional local tournaments.  Angie joined the NWTO to get more involved in women’s competitive tennis.   At the time of our interview, Angie was playing USTA women’s doubles, tri-level teams and mixed doubles at the 3.5 level and yet was recently bumped up to 4.0 when the new ratings came out.  Most of her tennis friends are NTRP 3.5, and she enjoys playing with them; yet she is yearning for the additional challenge of higher level competition.  “I am aggressive by nature as an athlete,” she says. “I don’t know how to turn it down.”  Even though Angie played mostly team sports in the past, she likes the workout she gets from playing singles.  “You have to work hard in singles–that’s who I am,” she claims.

As a former high school basketball coach at Mater Dei High School in San Diego, Angie also understands the value of teamwork in doubles.   “I am very aggressive at the net when I play doubles,” she says. “Opponents like to play ‘keep away’ from me.”  She is currently trying to improve her ground strokes and incorporate new tools for success.  “I want to be able to attack players’ games on the court in different ways,” she says with a grin.

Angie has been to the sectional level of USTA tennis yet yearns for more.  “I want to play at the national level, and I’d also like to experience tennis on different surfaces like grass or clay,” she says.  With her extensive athletic background, great desire to improve, and zest for the game, Angie will continue to climb the ladder of success in tennis.  As one of the newer members of NWTO, she can use the organization as a means to seek out additional tennis opportunities and expand her options as well as meet new people to compete with and against.  “I want to play tennis for a long time,” she says. “Tennis keeps you vital and helps people stay vibrant.”