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14
June 29 • 2017
jn
T
ennis star Alex D’Ascenzo has
quickly transitioned into the
next phase of her life.
Two weeks after graduating from
Cornell University, D’Ascenzo began
her three-year pursuit of a doctorate in
physical therapy at the Massachusetts
General Hospital Institute of Health
Professions in Boston.
“I’ve benefited from the physical
therapy I’ve received during my tennis
career,” she said. “Now I want to help
others.”
D’Ascenzo was eager to get started
in grad school.
“I didn’t get much time off
after I graduated; but if waited, I
wouldn’t have been able to start at
Massachusetts General Hospital until
June 2018,” she said.
D’Ascenzo came to Cornell as
a coveted high school girls tennis
recruit. The Frankel Jewish Academy
grad was ranked the No. 5 recruit in
Michigan by the Tennis Recruiting
Network.
Four years later, her women’s ten-
nis career at Cornell couldn’t have
ended any better.
The Big Red finished 15-8 this
spring, tying the program record
for wins in a season. Cornell’s 5-2
Ivy League record was its best since
1996 and resulted in the team’s first
Ivy League championship.
Cornell needed help on the final
day of the Ivy League season to win
the title, and it got it.
The Big Red defeated Brown 4-1 to
give itself a chance. About 90 min-
utes later, Penn finished a surprising
4-3 win over Harvard.
Had Harvard beaten Penn,
Harvard would have been the out-
right Ivy League champion. Because
it lost, Harvard fell into a three-way
tie for the league championship with
Cornell and Dartmouth.
D’Ascenzo and her teammates
closely followed the Harvard-Penn
match during the start of a five-hour
bus ride from Brown, located in
Providence, R.I., back to the Cornell
campus in Ithaca, N.Y.
“We kept refreshing the Penn
team’s Twitter account to find out
Alex D’Ascenzo helped the Cornell University
women’s tennis team win its first
Ivy League championship.
what was happening in the match,”
D’Ascenzo said.
The Ivy League champion has an
automatic berth into the NCAA tour-
nament. Dartmouth earned that berth
through a complicated tie-breaking
procedure.
D’Ascenzo had an outstanding ten-
nis career at Cornell, including being
named the team’s Most Valuable
Player and setting a program record
for dual match singles victories (17)
when she was a junior.
She became only the fifth Cornell
women’s tennis player to earn All-Ivy
League honors in both singles and
doubles.
D’Ascenzo was 10-8 at No. 2 singles
and 9-8 at No. 1 doubles this season.
Her doubles partner was longtime
friend Marika Cusick from Hinsdale,
Ill. The two met through tennis.
“Our tennis styles complemented
each other, and we were comfortable
playing together as people,” D’Ascenzo
said. “We each knew when we could
say something to each other, and
when wasn’t a good time to say some-
thing.”
D’Ascenzo graduated from Cornell
on May 28 with a bachelor’s degree in
human biology health and society.
“Going to Cornell was the best col-
lege decision I could have made,” she
said. “I really enjoyed being on the
women’s tennis team. I’m a better
person than when I got there, and the
academics were very challenging. I
feel I’m prepared for the work load of
graduate school and I have good time-
management skills.”
D’Ascenzo, 22, has been playing
high-level competitive tennis since she
was 11. She isn’t certain how much
tennis she’ll be able to play faced with
the rigors of grad school.
“We’ll see,” she said. “I’d love to keep
playing.”
D’Ascenzo is the daughter of Larry
D’Ascenzo and Leslye Sklar D’Ascenzo.
Her family live in West Bloomfield. •
Send tips to stevestein502004@yahoo.com.