Tennis anyone? Carle Place has learned the hard way

Half hour before the biggest match of the regular season, Christina Kennedy straps her knees into place.

You hear the loud, repetitive scratch of Velcro before you see her, crouched as she is among the chattering, playfully jibing, and thoroughly likable members of the Carle Place girls tennis team. She pops up easily. No pain.

Kennedy isn't a born tennis player. A soccer player, sure. A lacrosse player? Definitely. Tennis started in July, after her second knee surgery. She wants to go to Johns Hopkins to become an orthopedic surgeon and said she needs a lacrosse scholarship to do it; ironically, her knees had other plans.

"After my second surgery, I needed to develop my muscles back," she said. Soccer, with its long swaths of open field, was too much, too soon. "Tennis was short bursts and quick adjustments . . . it's built a lot of my muscle back."

With a soft tissue surgery on one knee and realignment on another, it would have been easy to pass off collegiate athletics as a pipe dream. For her, Carle Place tennis - the team that will take anyone, as long as there's space and a willingness to put in the work - was the unlikeliest of second chances.

But if the Frogs, who clinched a Conference III playoff spot after beating Calhoun that day, have an identity, it comes from that sense of scrappiness. Many members are girls who never played before middle school or whose families don't necessarily have the money for extra tennis lessons - something that isn't always the case in the higher conferences, where teams like Syosset and Garden City are known both for their jaw-dropping talent and relative area affluence.

"Those kids have lessons," coach Brian Paradine said. "I've got girls and they're natural athletes, but me and have taught them to play tennis . . . Paul gets girls who have never picked up a racket. We're talking real fundamentals."

Give them points for being quick studies. They have access to four courts for two hours after school, but have earned themselves a postseason berth for the first time in three years.

A lot of credit goes to Paradine, who said he overcame a small culture shock when he went from coaching his daughter - a state champion - to coaching girls who were new to the sport. They grew on him, though, and quickly.

"So many of the Carle Place students I've coached put in every bit of effort and enthusiasm as those talented girls who have years of practice and lessons," he said. "They sweat their rear ends off, and they're such sweet kids."

There's Ashley Cole, a softball pitcher who joined to be with her friends and build arm strength; Deepanjali Soni, a ninth-grader who never played before middle school and has advanced to fourth doubles; Kristina Deonaraine, first doubles, who didn't imagine this crew could make it to the playoffs, and Jessica Pisani, one of the few to have a handful of private lessons, who said "there's not one person who hasn't improved."

Paradine is unabashedly proud. Many of his girls are certified academics - three years ago, the Frogs had the highest varsity academics of any team in the state, he said - and athletics don't take precedent.

His first singles, Dhara Kadakia, missed the individual championship Saturday to take the PSATs. Kadakia anchors the team and has been playing since fourth grade. She's only a sophomore and said she knows the feeling of staring across the court at someone older and more experienced - someone who has had the benefit of years of training.

"I see it a lot as first singles," Kadakia said. "You've just got to get in their heads a little."

Kennedy got what she wanted out of the experience - her knees are stronger - but betrays a pride that has nothing to do with her medical school, or lacrosse, or becoming an orthopedic surgeon.

"I've made a lot of improvement," she said, excitedly. "I beat out a lot of girls to play fourth doubles."

As she speaks, Carle Place starts making preparations for the match. The girls - plucked from softball circles and soccer pitches and school libraries, nervously take the court. Kennedy, a junior, surveys the action with a calm befitting a sports veteran.

"Everything," she said, "happens for a reason."