Unflappable and Unstoppable

When the bracket for the NCAA Division III Women’s Tennis Doubles Championship was released in May, the team that would be representing Sewanee on the court liked what they saw. Even though they’d be facing the tournament’s No. 2 seed in the first round. Even though they’d lost to that same duo just a week earlier, during the team tournament. Sewanee players Brooke Despriet and Katherine Petty knew they’d be looking across the net at worthy opponents, but also that they’d be looking at a team whose strengths, weaknesses, and game style were familiar to them. 

“They were one of the teams that we had struggled with,” Petty says of the pair from Case Western Reserve University. “But we knew which parts of our game we needed to improve from the last match, and we knew we could do it.”

Sewanee Women’s Tennis Head Coach Conchie Shackelford agreed. “We pulled Case Western, and they had just beaten us the previous week,” she says. “And I thought, ‘I like this draw. I know a lot about them.’”

When the unseeded pair from Sewanee took the court in Orlando, Florida, against the No. 2 seed, they didn’t flinch, and they came away with a straight-set victory, 6-4, 6-4. That win would set the table for a tournament run by Despriet and Petty that would make history for the Sewanee tennis program with a first-ever NCAA championship and create yet another highlight in the 37-year career of the winningest coach in Sewanee athletics history.

When they started the 2022-23 season, Despriet and Petty had never played together before. Despriet was a sophomore who had ended her freshman season with a top-10 national ranking in doubles while playing with a different teammate. Petty was a junior transfer who had spent her previous two years playing big-time NCAA Division I tennis at California’s Santa Clara University. Despite the newness of their alliance, Despriet and Petty found success on the court early.

In fall 2022, just weeks after playing their first match ever as a team, they entered the ITA Doubles Championship tournament and won it without losing a single set, impressing their coach in the process. “They just weren’t making errors, and they were making all the shots,” Shackelford says. “And I thought, ‘These two girls can play.’”

It was clear from the beginning that Despriet and Petty had the talent to win, but personality, teamwork, and complementary skills are also major factors in a doubles partnership. “Coming into the season, I knew they were both great doubles players,” says Shackelford. “Now you’ve got to see: Do these two complement each other? Can they get along? Do they have chemistry?”

The pair found that they did, indeed, have chemistry on the court, and a big part of their success throughout the season was their shared ability to stay relaxed in high-pressure situations. They found that they play better when they’re calm and that they’re both able to settle the other down when necessary. Despriet and Petty’s unflappability became a running joke on the women’s tennis team. “A lot of our teammates laugh at us,” says Petty. “They think it’s so funny when we play doubles together because we don’t really show much emotion.”

While their personalities may be similar, their strengths on the court are different. Petty is a big hitter with penetrating ground strokes and a powerful serve. Despriet plays more defensively, with remarkable touch and a devastating slice. Both, says Shackelford, have “really good hands,” especially at the net, making the ball do exactly what they want it to do. From her perspective, the two made a winning combination.

After dispatching the NCAA tournament’s No. 2 seed in the round of 16, Despriet and Petty advanced to the quarterfinals, where they topped the team from Kenyon in short order, 6-1, 6-1. That win set up a semifinal duel with the tournament’s No. 4 seed, Danna Taylor and Crystal Zhou from Carnegie Mellon University. Despriet and Petty had met this team twice before—once in the fall ITA tournament and once during the regular season—and had won both matches. But this time, there would be another factor in play: the Florida sun. It was so hot and humid in Orlando that a heat-index warning had been issued, and on the sidelines, the Sewanee coaches kept a bucket filled with ice water and towels, which they would drape over the players between games to help cool them down.

The Sewanee team started strong, taking the first set 6-2. But the Spartans fought back, winning the first three games of the second frame and eventually taking the set 6-3. “I think we were still in control of the match,” says Despriet, “but we couldn’t figure out why we were losing, and it was really frustrating for both of us.”

Because of the heat, the teams were given extra time between the second and third sets, and Shackelford and Associate Coach Doug Maynard used the extended break to remind the players of elements of their game plan and to encourage them to start the third set with energy and purpose. “I said, ‘Let’s jump on them really fast to put them on defense,” Shackelford says. And that’s what the Sewanee players did, storming out to a 4-0 lead in the decisive set before winning it 6-2.                        

When it came time for the national championship match against Matia Crisitiani and Olivia Soffer of Babson College, the Sewanee coaches wanted to make sure that playing on the big stage didn’t rattle Despriet and Petty. “There’s this fine line between being too excited and being too chill,” Shackelford says. “They knew that this could be a historic moment, not just for women’s tennis but for Sewanee. I said ‘Look, there’s a lot of expectations. You want to win this not just for yourselves but for your school. But we’re going to have to play this as just another match. We have to take this one point at a time and then one game at a time. We have to block out all the parents and the fans. We just have to be in this moment and focus on that. And that’s how you’re going to get through this without the nerves coming into play.’”

In the first set of the championship match, the Tigers and Beavers traded blows until the set was tied 4-4, and the ninth game was knotted at deuce. (The college game uses no-ad scoring, so at deuce, it takes just one point to win the game.) With Babson serving, Petty took the return and started a long rally. “Katherine decided to change directions, and it ended up being a pretty easy volley for the girl at the net,” says Despriet. “But she somehow missed it in the net, we won the game, and that was a really big turning point in the match. When that happened, there was just a wave of relief because we finally got the lead in the match and we were serving for the set.”

Petty also saw that point as a key moment in the match. “It had been really close the whole time, and if we were going to take the lead, that was the game to do it,” she says. “Brooke and I weren’t playing great the first set, but we were managing to play smart and stay in the rallies. That game set us up to get a quick start in the second set, too.”

After finishing off the first set, 6-4, Despriet and Petty started the second set strong, jumping out to a 4-0 lead before the Babson duo fought back to win two straight games. The Sewanee team was able to stave off the mini-rally and get the score to 5-2, 40-love, with Despriet serving for the match.

Needing just one point to clinch the match, did Conchie Shackelford believe it would happen? “In most of my life, I try to be glass-half-full,” she says. “But in coaching, I’ve always been glass-half-empty. So, I never count my chickens—we were up 5-2 and I’m like, I don’t know. You have to be that way because you can get disappointed so easily.”

Shackelford needn’t have worried. Despriet finished the match with a perfect ace and Sewanee tennis had its first-ever NCAA national championship.

Before the tournament even started, Shackelford had made her mark on NCAA and Sewanee athletic history. She’s the first woman to reach 600 wins in Division III tennis. She’s in the Top 10 for all-time career wins among coaches in all three NCAA divisions combined. She’s a seven-time conference coach of the year and a three-time regional coach of the year. Now, after the tournament, she has an NCAA national championship to add to her legendary résumé.

As the championship match was being played, Shackelford said she could hear her phone buzzing, over and over again. When she finally had a chance to take a look at it, there were more than 150 text messages from friends and family who had been watching the match live online. She talked to her husband, Sewanee Athletic Director John Shackelford, after the match: “He was crying. I was crying. I’ve been coaching at Sewanee for 37 years and it had never happened, so John just kept hammering it home for me: ‘You won a national championship.’”

It took 37 years, but Shackelford says the wait made the eventual prize that much sweeter. “If I had done this with a team when I was younger, I wouldn’t have the appreciation that I do now,” she says. “You come to this realization—this is so incredibly hard. You get close but you don’t ever do it. To finally get there? It’s amazing.”

For their part, Despriet and Petty are still processing what it means to join Heather Stone, C’00 (track and field), as the only individual national champions in Sewanee history, but Petty says her father has been trying to put it in perspective for her. “He said, ‘When are they making a statue of you and Brooke?’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ Then I thought about it and was like, ‘Oh, that’s what we did.’”