Isle grad racks up the wins in wheelchair tennis

Before the Grand Slam tennis season welcomes Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, it is worth a peek back to earlier this month at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.

Hawaii’s Shelby Baron took out the second and third seeds, then rallied past Canada’s Yuka Chokyu, 6-7 (4), 7-5, 6-2, in the final to win the 15th annual Jana Hunsaker Memorial ITF Wheelchair Tennis Tournament at Flushing, N.Y.

It was the first International Tennis Federation championship for the Punahou graduate, who turns 21 in August and is about to head into her senior year at the University of Alabama.

“It was a huge milestone and a show of the hard work we’ve been putting in,” says Alabama coach Evan Enquist. “I’m hoping she’ll take the confidence gained into the next ITF.”

That would be the Midwest Open next month in Michigan. Baron is home now, teaching tennis to third- and fourth-graders at Punahou and spending much-needed time with family, friends and local food.

“I really miss the aloha spirit back home,” she concedes. “There’s a lot of Southern hospitality in Alabama, but nothing can beat home. I also miss my mom’s cooking.”

She has come a long way from the little girl who found her passion in sports half a lifetime ago and played junior tennis against able-bodied kids to get better.

Alabama is one of three schools, with Arizona and Texas Arlington, that sponsors wheelchair tennis. ’Bama’s Adapted Athletics department also has collegiate wheelchair basketball teams for men and women, and the women have won four national titles. Emerging sports are rowing and track and field.

Safe to say few have made a larger leap to Tuscaloosa than Baron, a junior majoring in communicative disorders. She was hardly prepared to set up an RV on the “Quad” for the routine football weekend tailgate. Watching the Crimson Tide roll with 100,000 others at Bryant-Denny Stadium was also a foreign concept.

She has … adapted, with a little help from her tennis friends, who come from Canada, Lithuania and Michigan.

“Balancing school and tennis hasn’t been too difficult,” Baron says. “I have been doing that for a few years now. The difference here is that I came knowing one person. It was intimidating, and I experienced a lot of culture shock moving to the South. However, I have made so many friends in the past year who have made this transition a lot easier.”

Born with spina bifida, a spinal cord defect, she didn’t play her first official wheelchair match until 2010. Until then she climbed the slopes of Punahou on crutches, maintaining a 3.75 GPA.

She started playing wheelchair tennis in 2010, in part because she simply wanted to beat her brother at something. It opened her eyes to a new world, and Baron has been all over it since.

She has gone to four World Team Cups and been ranked as high as 51st in the world (34th in doubles). Baron is 64th now — fourth among American women. She has played for the U.S. women’s team since 2013.

That was the year Brent Hardin, Alabama’s director of adapted athletics, saw her at a tournament in South Carolina, where she was beating one of his players.

Baron was enrolled at the University of Hawaii at the time, and Alabama was making tennis a “high performance” sport, with scholarships, dedicated coaches and much higher expectations.

Baron had the grades, and came up with the courage to take her game and academics 4,300 miles away from home. After World Cups in South Africa and the Netherlands, it wasn’t much of a leap.

Daily practices, along with conditioning and collegiate coaching, have made her stronger, “added a lot more topspin” and, clearly, given her the confidence to take on the world.

“Going into the final (at Flushing), I was so determined to win the tournament,” Baron recalls. “I played her four years ago and lost like 1 and love.”

She went in as the underdog, went up in the first set and got nervous, then fell behind 1-4 in the second before realizing “I should be beating her,” Baron says.

She came back, and while her opponent took a break before the third set, Baron looked over at Arthur Ashe Stadium, listened to a concert next door and took in the sound of her friends cheering her on.

“I got all pumped up,” she recalls. “The most determined I’ve ever been in a tournament.”

The wheelchair tennis world was hers, at least for a day.

“I feel really good about it,” Baron says. “I played this woman four years ago, so it shows I’m improving. And I’ve won consolation and doubles before, but this was my first singles win, so it was pretty big.”

She has moved on, to a long-term goal.

“Right now my goal is to make the 2020 Paralympics in Tokyo,” Baron says. “I am focusing on my studies right now at a great school, where I am being supported for tennis.”

Life is good in Tuscaloosa.