WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Growing up in El Paso, Texas, Christina (Caparis) Baldyga knew she wanted to go somewhere different for her collegiate tennis experience; and a trip to Winston-Salem to visit Wake Forest showed her exactly what that future could potentially look like.
“I was looking to leave Texas,” Baldyga explained. “The national tennis tournaments where the coaches would come and watch the players allowed me a chance to connect with (Wake Forest head coach) Lew Gerrard. I took a recruiting trip in my senior year and fell in love with the campus.
“I thought it was the perfect fit for me. That was it – I committed early and there I was.”
Although she didn’t initially realize it was Wake Forest she was visualizing as the perfect college destination in high school, Baldyga essentially saw her dreams coming to life.
“In high school, when I thought about going to college, Wake Forest was the classic in terms of what I imagined going to college would be,” Baldyga said. “The small campus, the Quad and the beautiful architecture were all wonderful. We went out one night, while on my trip, and met some people from the university. Then, I was out on campus the next night and ran into some of the same people.
“To me, it’s pretty crazy at a college to randomly run into the same people two nights in a row. That helped me believe it would be a good fit, because it seemed like it would have a family-type vibe.”
Earning All-Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) honors as a sophomore in the spring of 1995, Baldyga finished her career with 110 singles victories — which is good for third-best in Wake Forest women’s tennis history. Additionally, her 24 conference victories rank fifth-most all-time.
“That was kind of when I peaked, which is too bad since I still had two years to go,” she said about winning All-ACC as a sophomore. “It just came together. Now, it’s not to say my junior and senior years weren’t good. I felt we had a team where the middle of the lineup could have been interchanged a bunch of different ways and we could still win. We had a bunch of girls that were fairly close in ability, which made us dangerous.”
The Demon Deacons finished second in the ACC during that 1995 season, with a league record of 7-1. They fell to Duke in the conference tournament before making an NCAA Tournament regional appearance in California versus UCLA.
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