Fox Chapel grad Carissa Shepard takes firm grasp on No. 1 singles spot for Seton Hill women's tennis

As the first-year coach of the Seton Hill women’s tennis team, Megan Satira needed to prioritize learning her players’ abilities. She got more than she bargained for from sophomore Carissa Shepard.

While Satira was on the court doing a drill with the players, Shepard unleashed a forehand. But instead of hitting the court, the ball hit Satira, leaving a bruise.

“I was aiming cross-court, and you know how sometimes you hit the ball and it doesn’t go where you want it to go …,” said Shepard, unable to contain a little laugh when recalling the incident.

But Shepard, a Fox Chapel grad, doesn’t often have trouble making the ball go where she wants it to go. For much of her freshman season, she was stationed at No. 1 singles, splitting time with then-junior Kasey Storkel. This season, starting with the fall portion of the Griffins’ schedule, Shepard has been entrenched at No. 1 singles.

When she took over the program, Satira, herself a former No. 1 singles player for Seton Hill, immediately was struck by Shepard’s power. (Literally.) It was one of several attributes that convinced Satira she had her bona fide No. 1 singles player.

“In the first couple of days of practice I knew she was most likely going to be No. 1 for us,” said Satira, the former Megan Hudak, who graduated from Seton Hill in 2015. “She has a really big serve that sets her up to win a lot of points, and her ground strokes from the baseline are incredible.”

Shepard was a little late to the party when it came to competitive tennis. Though she started taking lessons and going to clinics in elementary school, it wasn’t until middle school that she got involved in USTA events and other tournaments.

Playing competitively flipped the switch, and she decided she wanted to take the game as far as she could. At Fox Chapel, she won a pair of section singles titles and advanced through a couple rounds of the WPIAL tournament.

When she started shopping around for a college, she said she was struck by the close-knit dynamic that seemed to permeate the Griffins. It helped that many of the players were from the WPIAL, though Shepard said she never crossed paths with any of them in competitions.

“Which was shocking to me,” she said. “(The team atmosphere) is the most important part for me. That’s honestly why I picked this school. When I was touring the school, it was such a team connection. It felt like they were rooting for you.”

During her freshman season, Shepard won three matches at No. 1 singles and two at No. 2. She and Storkel partnered to win No. 1 doubles six times.

Shepard said she took a lot of lessons from that first season. The most important, she said, was not putting so much pressure on herself.

“I think a lot of it is just staying focused on my game and not worrying about my opponent,” she said. “Obviously, there’s matches I’m going to win. There’s matches I’m going to lose. But if you kind of go in and just focus on playing your best and doing what you need to do, you can walk off the court either way knowing that you did your best.

“And I think in high school I did put a lot of pressure on myself because I was ‘supposed to’ win all of my matches. So now kind of going into this, I’m more focused on my game and not the ending result or who is ‘supposed to’ win.”

Still, Shepard has done her fair share of winning. Entering Saturday’s match against Cal (Pa.), she had won four times each at No. 1 singles and No. 1 doubles. Counting Sunday’s match against Clarion, Shepard has six more matches to improve on her totals.

Seton Hill was 3-8 overall and 0-1 in the PSAC entering April.

Aside from her change in mentality, Shepard is playing differently. She said she isn’t afraid to go on the offensive and attack opponents with those powerful strokes Satira knows so well.

Playing a more attacking style ups the risk/reward factor, but Shepard said she is willing to live with a few errors if it means she has the potential to end points quicker.

“I used to be a very defensive player and just kind of getting the ball back,” she said. “But I think I’ve tried to take a more aggressive stance. … Sometimes I can see the errors in it, but I think it makes me feel more like I am putting in my all.”

Her partnership with Storkel, meanwhile, has been a fruitful one. Shepard said the two of them clicked from the first time they were paired. Both, Shepard said, share that attacking mindset, and she believes both are capable of playing well at the net and on the baseline.

Storkel, being the more experienced player at the college level, is the calming influence. Shepard said she often is nervous going into matches, but Storkel encourages her to just dive in and knock out the jitters.

Shepard has proven to be a quick study, and with two more years of collegiate tennis ahead, she figures to be a factor at the top of the Griffins’ lineup for many more matches.

The final piece would be a deep run in the PSAC tournaments. She and Storkel won first-round singles matches this season before losing in the second round, Shepard to the top overall seed. In doubles, they lost in the first round, again to the top seed.

“We do have a very tough conference,” Satira said. “But if she sticks to her game and plays the way that I know she can, I honestly believe she can beat anyone.”

Shepard isn’t necessarily focused on results. As long as she feels like she has done her best, she said, she can walk away satisfied.

“I feel like it’s more within myself and making sure I do the best that I can,” she said. “Whenever I measure myself at the end of the season, I’m more like, ‘Did I put everything into each match?’ ”