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Behind The Curtain Event Staff

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Shining
Star

Steve Stein
Contributing Writer

because that was what I would be
doing in college.”
Brown has played in United States
Tennis Association tournaments since
she was 10. She focused on those
events instead of being on the Frankel
tennis team when she was a sopho-
more and junior.
As for cross-country, Brown com-
peted in that sport at Frankel mainly
to improve her fitness for tennis.
She still laughs about being disquali-
fied from a meet against Royal Oak
Shrine for running the wrong way on a
course at Memorial Park in Royal Oak.
Brown was the MVP of the Frankel
tennis team both years she played,
and she was a captain of the tennis
and cross-country teams. She earned
Second Team All-State honors in ten-
nis as a senior.
An outstanding student in high
school who graduated with a 3.99
grade-point average, she was president
of Frankel’s National Honor Society
and a member of the Phi Beta Kappa
honor society.
Brown, 18, said she decided to
attend Tufts because of its size (there
were just 10,659 students in fall 2015),
location, tennis coaching staff and fel-
low players.
“The professors at Tufts are smart
and very helpful,” she said. “As for ten-
nis, I like the team aspect. It’s nice hav-
ing teammates who are there for you
and upperclassmen to look up to. It’s
also great to represent your school.”
Spring is the main season for
women’s tennis in college. Brown has
been practicing with her team this
fall and expects to play in a tourna-
ment this week at Bowdoin College in
Brunswick, Maine.
Tufts has been a Division III wom-
en’s tennis power for several years. It
competed in the NCAA tournament
last season and was ranked No. 9 in
the country at the end of the year.
Brown’s family lives in Birmingham.
Her parents are Joel and Andrea
Brown, and she has three younger sib-
lings: Stella, 16, and twins Oliver and
Charlotte, 12.

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E

liza Brown didn’t compete
in sports very often in high
school.
She was on the girls tennis team
at Frankel Jewish Academy in West
Bloomfield in her freshman and senior
years and the girls cross-country team
as a senior.
But she accomplished enough to be
named the 2016 Jewish News Female
High School Athlete of the Year by the
Michigan Jewish Sports Foundation.
Brown is now a freshman women’s
tennis player at NCAA Division III
Tufts College in Medford, Mass., just
outside Boston.
Because she was at Tufts, she wasn’t
able to attend the Michigan Jewish
Sports Hall of Fame induction dinner
last month at the Jewish Community
Center in West Bloomfield in which
she was honored along with Marc
Sable, the Male High School Athlete of
the Year.
Sable was a tennis star at
Cranbrook-Kingswood in Bloomfield
Hills and is now a freshman playing
Division I tennis at Boston University.
He and Brown are friends.
“It’s a great honor to be named
Athlete of the Year,” Brown said. “I
appreciate everything my coaches and
family have done to help me.”
Armand Molino has been her pri-
vate tennis coach since she was 12.
“He’s like an uncle to me. He’s
helped me on and off the court,” she
said.
She also praised Larry Stark,
Frankel’s girls tennis coach when she
was a senior.
Brown played No. 2 singles as a
freshman and No. 1 singles as a senior
at Frankel.
She went undefeated each year,
but didn’t compete in the Michigan
High School Athletic Association state
tournament because of conflicts with
a Jewish holiday when she was a fresh-
man and a senior class trip to Israel.
“It’s OK that I didn’t compete in
the state tournament because I still
had fun being on the team,” she said.
“I played tennis when I was a senior
to represent my school and see again
what it was like to be on a team

Eliza Brown

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