As tennis legend Andre Agassi slammed winner after winner inside Arthur Ashe Stadium, a 10-year-old girl sat in awe as she realized this was the sport of her dreams.

Now an adult, junior Syracuse tennis player Amanda Rodgers has started to reach those goals that she set in the fifth grade. She was 18-2 her freshman year in singles and was named to the All-Big East team. Now, she’s poised to lead the Orange in its first season in a tougher Atlantic Coast Conference.

“I watched Agassi play on the stadium and I was just like, ‘This is what I want to be,’” Rodgers said. “‘This is what I want to do when I grow up.’ From then on, I’ve focused on tennis.”

Rodgers was destined to be an athlete. Her mother Mary Pat Guest competed in the Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada, as a skier, her father Tom Rodgers played quarterback for Connecticut and even her uncle, Mary Pat’s brother, competed in equestrian in the Olympics.

“She just learned she had to be active and do stuff rather than sit around and do nothing,” Guest said. “But if she wanted to be a great piano player, I wouldn’t have turned her away from that. She just happened to be a really good tennis player.”

Guest and her ex-husband Tom divorced when Rodgers was only 1, and she lived primarily with her mother in Virginia for most of her childhood.

Guest allowed her daughter to be involved in tennis at an early age, taking her to the courts, signing her up for lessons and letting her go to tennis camps during the summer. She also would take her daughter to local tournaments whenever her daughter wanted to enter.

“Sometimes she’d win and sometimes she’d lose, but she still loved it,” Guest said. “And I thought, ‘Well, shoot. If she still loves it and still wants to do it, then great.’”

Rodgers soon realized Virginia might not be the place for her if she wanted to have a successful career in the future. During her freshman year of high school, she told her mom she wanted to move to Florida so she could compete against some of the best players her age.

“I was like, ‘I need to go somewhere where it’s really competitive,’” Rodgers said. “It really wasn’t hard because I knew I wasn’t going to go anywhere if I stayed in Virginia.”

While Rodgers was steadfast in wanting to move, her mother initially had hard feelings about leaving a place she lived for so long.

“I was a little more skeptical than she was,” Guest said. “Once I got here and realized she really had the passion, it was a lot easier for me.

“You only have once chance at a dream.”

Rodgers felt she clicked in right away at Saddlebrook Prep in Wesley Chapel, Fla. She never felt like she didn’t fit in, but her personal coach John Eagleton said during her junior and senior season, he did not like everything he saw at first with Rodgers.

He remembers her hitting the ball flatly and inconsistently, with little spin on her shots. The talent was there, but the placement wasn’t.

To change her game to play with more precision, Eagleton made a chart for Rodgers to show her what she needed to adjust. He sought to model her game after Spanish professional superstar and fellow left-handed player Rafael Nadal.

“She hits that heavy ball,” Eagleton said. “It helps her because she can put the heavy ball deep in her opponent’s backhand.”

As Rodgers adjusted her game, she only continued to get better. She started playing in pro tournaments, even winning a U.S. Open national playoff event in mixed doubles.

Then-Syracuse head coach Luke Jensen took notice and offered her a full ride. She decided to accept his offer after receiving a promise to be taken to pro tournaments in the offseason.

“Coach Jensen and coach George, they are pretty much the only school in the country that takes their kids to pro tournaments,” Rodgers said. “Some colleges do that with only a few players on the team, but they do it with everyone, so I thought that was pretty cool.”

Rodgers dominated as soon as she arrived on campus, winning 14 straight singles matches after a 1-1 start to her career freshman year in singles play. She also came through for her team in the clutch, as early into that season she climbed from out of match point against Harvard to win in a third-set tiebreaker and give her team the victory.

“She’s very coachable, wants to get better every day and she hates to lose,” said Jensen, who resigned on Jan. 29. “If there is one thing I’d put on that girl, she gets mean when she’s down.

“Her best tennis is right around the corner because she is so darn determined to get better.”

As Rodgers now enters her junior year, she aspires to top an impressive first two seasons by putting her name at the top of the SU record books.

Said Rodgers: “I’ve always been kind of a record person. I’ve always wanted to break the records and stuff. I got really close with doubles last year and singles my freshman year. Maybe not this year, but my senior year I really want to break the record.”

Published on February 12, 2014 at 2:23 am

Contact Ryan: rlraigro@syr.edu