By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — The University of Virginia women’s tennis team is using its off weekend before the start of the NCAA tournament to gather for a much-loved event.
The Cavaliers’ annual awards banquet is Saturday at the Rotunda, where one of the program’s most distinguished alumnae, Cindy Brinker Simmons, will present the award for the team’s most improved player. Brinker Simmons, who lives in Dallas, has done so since early in Sara O’Leary’s tenure as head coach.
“It just felt so fitting with the way she takes on life and has such an amazing attitude about it, no matter what is thrown her way,” said O’Leary, who’s in her seventh season at UVA.
When she played at Virginia, she was Cindy Brinker. That changed when she married Bob Simmons in 1990, but she remains as upbeat and exuberant as when she arrived on Grounds in 1975, not long after the University had gone co-ed.
“She’s the best. I love her,” O’Leary said. “Every time that she comes to Charlottesville, we grab coffee or she’ll come over to our house for dinner. I just think she’s a wonderful person and has a lot of joy and she’s super kind, and I look up to her a lot. She’s accomplished so many amazing things in her life and then also dealt with a lot of tough things in her life. She’s just been an amazing friend and mentor to me.”
Brinker Simmons, who was born in San Diego, grew up in Dallas. Her father was Norm Brinker. Her mother was Maureen “Little Mo” Connolly Brinker, a tennis legend who won nine major titles in singles, including a Grand Slam (the first by a woman) in 1953.
“Mom never wanted me to play tennis,” Brinker Simmons recalled, “because she never wanted me to feel the pressures of following in the footsteps of a famous parent. And she was right. There were pressures. But she always said, ‘If that’s what Cindy wants to do, then I will let her do that.’ And I just think that tennis was in my blood. It was in my DNA.”
In 1969, when Brinker Simmons was 12, her mother died of cancer. Not long after that, Brinker Simmons was invited to play in the 12-and-under national tournament, and her grief fueled her on the court.
“I just think I was so full of adrenaline,” she said, “because I had just had this seismic, cataclysmic devastation that just broke my heart.”
She finished that year ranked 10th in the national and fourth in Texas in her age group. Her…