Senior Lea Owens Steps Up Her Game On the Court

By Kayla Cohen ’17

The number one girls’ singles player, senior Lea Owens, will compete on the tennis team with a full scholarship at the University of Richmond starting next fall. Her full ride is the most recent milestone in her tennis career, which began when Owens was only four years old.

Her freshmen year, she started playing at the Junior Tennis Championship Center (JTCC) at University of Maryland, which is a regional training center where people from all over the county come to train. The facility offers full-time and part-time training. When the high school tennis season ends this fall, Owens will be practicing at the JTCC five days a week, for three hours each day.

Growing up, Owens’s older sister inspired her to play tennis. “She was always better than me, and I wanted to be as good as her,” said Owens. Playing at the number one singles spot, Owens has become an outstanding player. “What I love most about tennis is the intensity of the one-on-one competition,” she said.

During the winter, Owens practices for about three hours a day, and in the summer she practices for about five hours a day. Her practices consist of both playing tennis and doing fitness. The intense training should help tremendously as she prepares to play tennis at the college level.

“I decided to go to UR because it has really good academics and it’s small so you can get a lot of attention. Also, it [is] really pretty and not too far from home,” Owens said. In addition to Richmond’s small park-like campus, Owens was attracted to the tennis team’s fun attitude.

Girls’ tennis coach Tom Maley watched Owens become a stronger player over her four years of high school tennis. “Our current roster features many quality young women with very good tennis skills. However, Owens is truly one of the two very best female tennis players in our county and even throughout the entire state of Maryland,” he said. When Owens first started high school, her national ranking for her grade was about 600. Now, she is in the top 100 for Class of 2016.

Next year, the tennis team will be different without Owens, and she will be missed. But her amazing tennis playing will serve her well throughout her time in college and in the future.