TENNIS : All in: Harman’s competitiveness, vigor makes her fitting leader of Syracuse

A 3-year-old girl and her older brother scampered around their home, making up games, throwing a ball, always competing. Their mother’s nerves were on edge as lamps and other household adornments were at risk.

But they didn’t miss their targets. Not even the 3-year-old Emily Harman.

‘They had a pretty good aim with the ball as well, so it’s just that I was always very nervous about it,’ said Sharon Harman, their mother. ‘ … If she had a choice between reading a book and tossing a ball somewhere, she was always tossing a ball somewhere.’

Harman would tag along with her older brother, John, and sister, Heather, who set the bar for their younger sister in athletics and academics. She went where they went, played what they played and did what they did, always trying to beat them.

Yet the youngest Harman was a natural athlete in her own right. Baseball, basketball, soccer and skiing all came to her easily. Her parents told her doing her best in anything was good enough. But for Harman, only winning was good enough.

She brought the same mentality to Syracuse as a 17-year-old freshman, starting at No. 1 singles in her debut and developing into the face of the program in four years. Now the senior leader of the team, Harman has amassed more than 120 wins in her career at Syracuse, taking the program to new heights. With Harman leading the way with a 14-2 record at No. 1 singles, the Orange rose to its highest ranking under head coach Luke Jensen at No. 39 in the nation earlier this season.

‘Every program has their starting point, and I think when it’s all said and done, it will be Emily Harman being the starting point of what is going to become Syracuse tennis,’ Jensen said.

Harman’s relentless need to win helped her make the recreation leagues of Petersburg, W.Va., her personal proving grounds.

‘I put everything into everything I did from the time I was born,’ Harman said.

Eight-year-old Harman needed a new challenge. As she walked through Petersburg Elementary School, she found one.

A flier in the school for a tennis recreation league. It was something different, something Harman wanted to pick up.

She couldn’t. The recreational league was for children ages 10 and up.

So she called the league organizer, Dottie Riggleman, a retired gym teacher and distant family friend, asking if she could play. Impressed by her initiative, Riggleman made an exception.

Harman found her challenge.

‘A lot of other sports you could probably pick it up and do pretty well right away without much technical help or anything of that nature,’ Harman said. ‘But it was always a huge challenge for me to succeed in the game, and I think that’s something that really drew me to it.’

Harman’s natural athleticism carried over to the tennis court. By the time she was 11, Harman impressed a former high school coach, who insisted to her mother that she take lessons from John Dokken, a coach in Winchester, Va.

Winchester was a 90-minutelong car ride from Petersburg. For five years, Harman and her mother made the trip to Stonebrook Club for sessions with Dokken.

The lessons with Dokken fostered an already developing passion for the game.

Harman was working with Dokken for about a year when she wrote a portfolio book. Harman showed off the seventh-grade English assignment left and right. She loved it.

Inside, there was a drawing of her holding a tennis racket. The book plainly stated to her teacher and anyone else she showed it to that she wanted to win the U.S. Open.

She still loves the book. She still wants to win the U.S. Open.

‘Looking back on it and reading it now – I actually read it last weekend when my parents were here – and it brought a smile to my face because that really pushed me to get to this point,’ Harman said.

It was her first year of tennis instruction. She was just starting to compete in regional United States Tennis Association tournaments, working her way toward nationals between playing baseball, basketball and soccer.

Yet time spent playing anything other than tennis put her at a disadvantage to her tennis-only junior competition.

‘I think I’ve always been a little different, you know, in tennis,’ Harman said. ‘I come from an area that has pretty much zero tennis background in terms of making tennis players, and I would roll up in a mud-beaten Trailblazer to these tournaments in (Washington,) D.C. and Virginia and be parked by a Porsche on the right, a BMW on the left, a Ferrari and all this and the others, so I was different.

‘I was different from the start,’ Harman said. ‘… That never changed in college.’

Aware of where she came from in the tennis world, Harman felt the need to prove herself. The need pushed her, but it also plagued her.

‘I think she’s just always had that, which works for her, but also when you get to a big stage sometimes it can work against you and I think that’s where,’ Dokken said, ‘and this is just my opinion, and I think that’s where she’s at, and I think she can pull right through when she gets more opportunities.’

Harman’s ability to overcome that mental obstacle has improved this season, going 6-0 in three-set matches for the Orange.

At 9:11 a.m. Feb. 26, Harman struck the first serve in what proved to be the defining match of SU’s season to date. She followed her natural momentum into the net where she quickly closed out the point, giving her and Alessondra Parra the lead over the then-No. 27 doubles team of Hanna Yu and Vicky Brook of then-No. 25 Yale.

Fresh off a loss to then-No. 59 William and Mary, the match represented perhaps the two seniors’ last chance at getting their team into the national spotlight. They rolled to an 8-3 win, and SU took the team match 4-3.

Two days later, the Orange was ranked No. 39 in the country.

After practice that day, Jensen told the team about their new ranking. The usually reserved Harman, who had preferred to dismiss the rankings as ‘just a number,’ opened up.

‘You have to know that some people are going to be jealous. They’re going to try to tear you down. They’re going to try to do anything they can to make you not successful,’ Harman said, ‘and for me, I just put a smile on my face and realize that that’s my motivation every day.’

This past weekend, she was in Charleston, S.C., playing doubles with former SU teammate Simone Kalhorn in the Family Circle Cup on the Women’s Tennis Association tour.

Harman finally felt like she was making it on the professional level. She was No. 1076 in the world and had just lost to No. 117 Paula Ormaechea in the singles qualifiers.

In six weeks she’ll graduate from the school where she’s had a successful career, winning more than 120 matches while reshaping the program and etching her name into the history books.

But it’s not enough for Harman.

‘For me, success is defined as making my career and making a life of this game and not having to get up and go to a 9-to-5 job,’ Harman said, ‘to be able to wake up in the morning and say, ‘I get to go play tennis, and I get to play a game as my life.”

jmklinge@syr.edu