Guided by her father, six-year-old Ana Baron (12) picked up a tennis racket and started learning the sport that would have a lasting impact on her life. Now in her final year of high school, Baron is continuing to pursue her sport even into her college life.

Baron grew up surrounded by tennis from her sister, who played, to her father, who was a coach, and even to her aunt, a college coach. Growing up in a tennis family is where she learned how much she enjoyed the sport.

“I was kind of surrounded by it. I really enjoyed the sport compared to all the other ones I tried,” Baron said. “I like that you were on your own on the court, and you didn’t really have a whole team, but you relied on yourself. For my personality, I like that a lot more.”

Baron has stuck with it and this season has won all except one particularly challenging match. Her greatest accomplishment, though, has been signing to Valparaiso University, her dream school, for tennis.

“This season has actually been going really well. I’ve won all my matches except one, which was against a team that’s fourth in the state. I’m actually really proud of it,” Baron said. “Signing to Valpo was a huge goal of mine, especially since I had an injury and I came back from that.”

This injury provided an extra challenge, requiring extra practice and work to achieve her goals. Baron had to train extensively to prepare for the season and reach her goal.

“Last summer, I really picked up the pace with everything that I was doing. I was hitting every single day,” Baron said. “Especially after my injury, I really focused on trying to recover from that and just get better so I played a lot more and did a lot more tournaments.”

Her training paid off as she is going to Valpo in the fall and is now considering becoming a math teacher, inspired by her parents. Baron hopes to keep tennis in her life and possibly coach after college.

“My parents are both teachers, and I really like their schedule compared to the schedule that I would be in if I was doing marriage counseling,” Baron said, “I wanted to coach for a school, so that was kind of a big thing because I want to carry on tennis after I’m done with it in college.”

In addition to inspiring her future path, tennis has taught Baron life lessons that she will be able to carry with her through her life.

“I learned not to give up, because tennis isn’t a timed match, it could technically go on forever. So even like when you’re down, you can always come back from stuff,” Baron said. “You learn to rely on yourself a lot because on the court you’re the only one there besides your opponent. You really have to have a lot of trust in yourself and that carries on and off the court.”

The little girl on the home town tennis court has now grown up to play on the courts of Valpo University while pursuing her career goals.