Sometimes, dreams change.
That Kathy Sell would excel at a major college tennis program is a surprise to no one. That the program would be Duke came as a surprise to everyone-including Sell.
Sell grew up with tennis, and she grew up with a dream-a dream she remembered in every dull thwack of a tennis ball against a cement wall, and every 5 a.m. wake-up call. Kathy Sell wanted to play at Stanford.
"When I first went to tennis academy, they had us write a list of short-term and long-term goals," Sell recalled. "My long term goal was to go to Stanford, and the whole four years I was there I worked toward that. I really wanted to go to Stanford."
As an eighth-grader at Palmer Tennis Academy, Stanford was a lot farther away for Sell than just the thousands of miles between Tampa, Fla. and the California university. But for this unproven young talent, that didn't matter.
"At [Palmer's], I was known as a hard worker but not really one of the elite players," Sell said. "At the time [Stanford] was a longshot, but by the time I was ready to graduate, it was almost a reality."
Then, the call she had spent five years waiting for finally came.
"I remember when [Frank Brennan, head coach of Stanford] called me," Sell said. "I wasn't sure if he was going to give me a visit or not and he called me up and offered me a visit. I was home in the house by myself at the time, and I hung up the phone, ran up the stairs and I fell on the stairs. I was so excited; I just tripped and fell. I took a visit to Stanford and just loved it."
For Sell, the stage seemed set for nearly a lifetime's worth of work to come to fruition. But, like the Dashwood sisters, heroines of the battered copy of "Sense and Sensibility" that she carts across the nation, Sell was about to find that things don't always go as planned. There was something she realized she wanted more than playing high-level tennis, something she couldn't do at Stanford-help build a tradition.
"What attracted me to Duke is the fact that we're so close to winning a national championship, and its never been done here before." Sell said. "At Stanford, it's a tradition to win. If they don't win, they're like 'what happened?' I think our team is equally good if not better than their team. So one day I just had a gut feeling that [Duke] was where I wanted to go, that this was the best place for me."
What Sell brought to Duke though, was well beyond a simple desire to win. She came to be a part of a team-an aspect often missing in recent Blue Devil squads.
"If you make a contribution to a team, you can be rewarded with more than just winning," Sell said. "Duke has such a tradition of winning all the time, so I want to bring something more to the team than just winning one more match. Obviously that's my job, but I want to help our team have a really good relationship, to be a strong team. I've always got that in the back of my mind, do whatever I can do to help the team."
Though she may not be the most talented player to ever don the Duke blue and white, her team-oriented approach to the game may be what sets her apart from the dozens of athletes that have called the Duke Tennis Stadium home.
"She's one of the best team players that this team has had in the last four years, probably the best in the last 6-8 years as far as support and doing things to be a team," coach Jamie Ashworth said. "Off the court is where she can make a big difference. In the three years to come, her leadership is where you will see her be most effective.
"Already a lot of times she'll be the one that says something, which is uncharacteristic of a freshman on an older team. If something is bothering her or the team, she will say it. That says she wants to be a leader and will be. As a junior and senior, she may be the best leader we've had."
Her constant team-before-self attitude and occasional odd-ball antics haven't gone unnoticed by her teammates either.
"Kathy is the most creative person I know," team captain Vanessa Webb said. "You can tell that on the court the way she plays the shots she tries, and off the court the way she makes these collages, or shirts with our faces on it.
"She is definitely unique in that she's always trying to do stuff to bring us closer together and bring us together as a team, and that's important, especially when we're at NCAAs and fighting like crazy."
Sell brought her own share of tangible results to this team as well-a 21-2 dual-team singles mark that has helped fill the void left by five departures last season.
"I don't think you expect any freshman to have a record like that," Webb said. "She's had a great season, she's hardly lost, and she's always come through when we needed her. She always plays well in the crunch."
Although she has spent much of the season playing competitors who were simply overmatched at No. 5 singles, she has won several big matches and already added a few lines of her own to the fabled Duke story. Her doubles victory with teammate Brooke Siebel clinched for the Blue Devils their highest finish ever at the Rolex Indoors and set up a final-round matchup with Stanford. Sell's victory in the finals was somewhat tempered, as the team fell in a 5-3 decision.
"[My victory against Stanford] was a great feeling; it was awesome," Sell said. "I had more drive; I didn't want to lose to the school that was my other choice. I wanted to prove, not to myself, but to everyone else, that I was at the right school, and that my team is going to be able to beat theirs one day."
The Kathy Sell story began well before she had dreams of Stanford. It began one Christmas morning. A simple gift to her oldest siblings, Mike and Jenny, permanently changed the course of the Sell family.
"My parents bought them tennis rackets for Christmas one year. They would go hit on the wall at the university next door constantly. They were pretty competitive kids, and they just had a knack for tennis, and it just turned into something bigger."
Bigger, as in Division I scholarships for all four children, sister Jenny's head coaching position at N.C. State and Mike, who is currently ranked among the top 150 players in both doubles and singles on the ATP tour.
As the last of four well-known tennis players, Sell had a lot of shadows to move out of. She left them all in one day by winning the doubles title at the Rolex Orange Bowl in, fittingly enough, the Sunshine State.
"It was one of those times when you feel like everything you've done-for me it was the past four years at Palmers-is suddenly worth it," Sell said. "Everything just came together at that one moment. The whole experience was amazing."
Where the Kathy Sell story ends for now is with another dream.
"I really want to win NCAAs," Sell said. "I think we've really got a great shot this year and in the years to come. I want to do something that's never been done before."
And sometimes, dreams can come true.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.