Hanging tough: Senior Siebel moves into lineup

There were 80 miles still to the state line.

Gainesville had slipped away, buried like a half forgotten dream beneath a haze of clouds. Atlanta would likely be up next, far off in the distance. The dull glow of Birmingham loomed an hour ahead still and a time zone away lie Dallas.

Home was a country away.

Music played through a set of unused headphones, poking at the usual din of airline noise-a baby crying in 13F maybe, a stewardess busy with 17C. It all blended together as the plane veered over city after city, like a sleek pinball rolling around in the empty night sky.

Thirty-six thousand feet over the remnants of a late May night, Brooke Siebel hardly noticed anything.

The tournament had been draining, and after two weeks of traveling, the plane rides were tedious. It had started with a bang, ended with a whimper and in between the season had been a lifetime-tough losses to Florida, a big win over Texas, months in training but just minutes to defeat.

It had been her junior year and it was likely Duke's best chance at a national title. A 23-3 regular season had put the Blue Devils into the NCAA tournament two weeks earlier, but a second straight tournament loss to Florida had made 27-4 about as valuable as 4-27.

And from six miles up, it had been just another season.

She hadn't been given a scholarship as a freshman, but that had more to do with overrecruiting in years past than her ability.

And in three years of playing at Duke, she had never found a spot in the singles lineup. But that, and all the Saturdays she spent cheering her team on, had nothing to do with her game.

That had to do with her mind.

"She's a very talented player," says teammate Kathy Sell, Duke's on court leader. "Talent has never been a problem with her."

But on a westbound flight home, change had grown tired of nagging at Brooke Siebel, so it jolted her awake.

It wasn't a sudden burst of inspiration that hit her, but rather it was like a tidal wave, building gradually until finally Brooke Siebel decided this was her year.

"It's been in my mind," she says. "Ever since the season ended last year, I got it in my mind: This is my senior year, this is my last chance."

She had worked hard over the summer, but that wasn't new. She had long owned the reputation as a hard worker on the team, but there's an old adage in tennis that 80 percent of the game is mental and between the lines there's no such thing as partial credit.

So Siebel concentrated on the mental game.

But sometimes the most valuable things aren't those you plan for, they're those you stumble across.

If you ask most people, they'll probably tell you that life tends to move in slow circles, from point to point and back again.

If you had asked Siebel about life's circles in September, she would've told you she was doing laps at Indy.

Siebel's tennis career had started in what might as well have been the North Pole-Billings, Mont.-the second city in a state that puts out tennis superstars about as often as John Rocker appears in New York travel brochures.

But there was one, and that one was the reason that a nine-year-old Ross, Calif., native first picked up a racket and never put it down.

"I entered my first tournament, and it was in Billings," says Siebel, who's family regularly vacationed at their ranch in Montana. "I lost in the first round, but my dad and I went over to watch Farley Taylor play and it was so impressive."

The University of Texas agreed, and after Taylor helped lead the Longhorns to a national title in 1996, so did the NCAA.

But Siebel never met the player she admired as a child, at least until head coach Jamie Ashworth told the team that Taylor would replace Jeff Wilson as assistant.

"I was surprised," Siebel says. "It's great having her around, not just because she knows the game so much, but because it's a part of my past; it keeps me focused."

Then there was Sell. The two had met six years before at Palmer's Tennis Academy in Florida, where Siebel was living with the middle of the three Sell sisters, Kris, while the youngest Sell lived nearby.

Siebel found herself attacked as not caring-her generally reserved personality kept her from vocal on-court shows, but criticizing Siebel for being reserved is a little like criticizing Michelangelo's David for having a misshapen neck-you're just missing the point.

And no one understood that better than Sell, who as a Palmer freshman kept to herself much like Siebel. The two became close friends at Palmer's and when Sell decided to come to Duke, they became even closer.

But while Sell was on the court, making her way up the lineup for two seasons, Siebel sat in the bleachers, cheering her team on, but always fumbling with a nearby racquet if one was handy, anxious to swap cheers for grunts.

"It was definitely frustrating," Siebel says. "I want the team to do well first, but I always want to be in there."

And this year, like at Palmer's half a decade ago, the two decided to live together, with Siebel paying close attention to how her roomie and one of the nation's grittiest players keeps it together.

"It's great having her around still," Siebel says of her roommate. "She helps remind me to stay tough; it's just the way she is all the time out there."

And thus far, things could hardly be working out better. After stringing together her best fall performance of her career, an 8-3 mark that included two victories over No. 10 Wake Forest and earned her a career-first ranking at No. 97, Siebel finally won an elusive spot in the lineup for the first three matches of the season.

"It's just a matter of getting it done," she says. "I know I can do it, and I just have to get out there."

Because somewhere in the back of her mind, she knows all two well about Saturdays in the bleachers and long rides home, and she knows that every time she steps on the court in a Duke uniform, she's that much closer to never doing it again.