From winning ECCs to being awarded ECC athlete of the year, sophomore Marina Matsas exceeded all expectations her freshman year. Now, the anticipation is palpable to see how the young tennis star will fare this season.
However, in order to truly understand Matsas and who she is, both as a player and person, we must start at the beginning. At five years old, Matsas started tennis on the basis that her parents wanted her and her brother to play a lifelong sport. She began with a Dora the Explorer racket and would dance when she made a good shot. This then progressed to a love for the sport so strong that she plays everywhere she goes. Matsas describes how “when I was 12 and my brother was 14, we went to Italy. We didn’t know many places, but we wanted to play tennis, so we looked up the top places. It was fun and cool to experience teachings from another coach.”
Just like that, tennis became her world. What started as a fun hobby became something infinitely more. Now, Matsas practices three to four times a week and almost every day in the summer. She plays at the Lyme Shores Racquet Club and hits with her friends and brother whenever she can. Matsas illustrates that she loves “playing tennis because I like the feeling of crushing the ball and winning matches. How I’m out there on the court by myself, and I’m the only one who can control my game.”
The question is, what drives Matsas to succeed? One key contributor is her brother, senior Christos Matsas. He started tennis at the same time as Marina and has been playing with her ever since. Matsas explains how Christos “always helps me out and gives me advice.” Another factor to Matsas’s success is her role models, such as her favorite player, Carlos Alcaraz. Matsas mentions that she loves him because of “how he’s achieved so much at a young age and how great of a player he is.” Both Christos Matsas and Carlos Alcaraz have shown Marina what it means to be a good tennis player and have pushed her in one way or another to be better. Nevertheless, Matsas states that her first and foremost motivation is how she wants “to win and achieve greatness and to be able to contribute to the team. ”
Now that the question of who Matsas is on the court has been answered, it is time to get to know her as a person as well. As she is in many honor level classes, one can see that Matsas works extremely hard on the court as well as off. Outside of tennis, she works at her family’s restaurant, Supreme Pizza. She enjoys reading, baking, and hanging out with her friends and family. She is also bilingual in Greek and enjoys traveling to Greece. She even discloses how when she is playing tennis, she will oftentimes start to speak Greek without even realizing it.
Coming back to this tennis season, Matsas shared that she has many goals, including winning ECCs again, making it farther in states, winning more matches, and keeping her serves consistent. When asked how she plans to succeed this season Matsas describes how she will “keep working hard and keep a good mindset when playing.” She predicts that “we have a good chance of winning ECCs as a team and will have a good season because we will have new doubles teams, and a lot of girls have been working hard in the off-season.”
In the end, Marina Matsas is both a well-rounded person and a driven athlete. She loves her sport and her team profoundly, and she works hard to master her craft and ensure that she is contributing to all of the team’s victories.
