GoDuke The Magazine: Chloe’s Way

By Jim Sumner, GoDuke The Magazine

Jamie Ashworth knows what a championship tennis team looks like. After all, he has coached the Duke women’s team into the NCAA Tournament every year since becoming head coach in the middle of the 1997 season (excluding 2020’s canceled campaign) and led Duke to the 2009 NCAA outdoor title as well as the 2003 and 2014 ITA indoor championships.  

Ashworth’s 2022 team certainly had the look of a champion, enjoying several major accomplishments including Duke’s first ACC Tournament title since 2012. Duke then entered the NCAA Tournament as the third seed nationally, on an eight-match winning streak, and dispatched Quinnipiac, Old Dominion and Georgia to advance to the national quarterfinals in Champaign, Ill.

There, the Blue Devils edged sixth-ranked N.C. State 4-3 to earn the program’s 11th berth in the national semifinals (ninth under Ashworth), where the season came to a heartbreaking close with a 4-3 loss to No. 2 Oklahoma, one step short of the NCAA title match.

You need talent, of course, to put together a 23-4 championship-caliber season such as this one. And Duke had plenty of talent. There’s Georgia Drummy, a lefthander who transferred to Duke from Vanderbilt. Her gritty come-from-behind, three-set win keyed Duke’s tense NCAA win over Georgia. Senior Kelly Chen is a seasoned veteran taking advantage of her covid-generated extra year. She picked up the clinching win in the NCAA battle with N.C. State. Emma Jackson and Ellie Coleman are precocious freshmen. Sophomore Karolina Berankova is a doubles specialist. She and Drummy earned invites to the doubles competition at the NCAAs. Senior Margaryta Bilokin and grad transfer Eliza Omirou (from Wake Forest) gave Duke valuable points in both singles and doubles.

But Ashworth says talent isn’t always enough.



“The best teams that we’ve had here, results-wise, are teams that really appreciate one other and are willing to play for one another. This team definitely has that. Maybe ball-striking those weren’t the best teams. But they were the best teams as far as I’m-going-to-do-everything-I-can-to-help-my-team and everybody understanding what their role is for that day. Not a lot of drama issues. This team definitely fits that bill.”

There’s something else that Ashworth didn’t mention. Nothing makes a coach’s job easier…