By Josie Emanuelli
Ashley Camel (‘20) won her second Landmark Conference Tennis Athlete of the week for her strong performance during the PTR Spring Tennisfest in Hilton Head, S.C. She went undefeated throughout the week, taking on several highly-ranked opponents. She garnered a 6-0 record over spring break through singles play, adding an impressive 3-0 record with her doubles play.
During spring break, she won a tiebreaker second set against East Nazarene’s top singles player, also helping to edge Sweet Briar with a tight 7-5 victory in her first set against their number-one ranked singles player.
From her performance over spring break, Camel improved her record to 7-2 in singles and 7-2 in doubles matches for the season.
When asked what brought her to Drew, she first cites her coach as the one who introduced to the school. When Camel visited over the summer, she was drawn to the campus as well as how close it is to New York City. Her biggest challenge as a student athlete has been time management, as she has found it difficult to balance her schoolwork, tennis and having time to relax.
Despite the difficulties that comes with being a student athlete, she looks forward to the rest of the season as she says she hopes “to get closer with my teammates and hope as a team to come through and win as many matches as we can.” Looking forward, she believes that the season will be a successful one for Drew and that they will go far in their season. Camel believes that tennis is different from other campus sports because as a team, they are very close while individually, they all have friends on other teams as well as those who are not involved with athletics.
When describing her team in one sentence, Camel said “As our coach and fellow teammates say, ‘Very nice’”.
Camel and her teammates will be back in action tomorrow as they take on John Jay College at 4 p.m in the Simon Forum.
