Jamie Hjort has seen a lot in his 12 years at the helm of Wood River tennis. But never this.<\/p>\n
The longtime Wolverines coach watched firsthand as Ruby Campbell went from never having picked up a racquet to a collegiate tennis player at Rome City Institute in Italy\u2014all in the span of two years.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a good surprise to have kids show up like that,\u201d Hjort said. \u201cThere\u2019s always a first, though, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
A tennis racquet, that is.<\/p>\n
Campbell had been playing pickleball for years. It started with her dad. Around 2019, new courts were built near their house and the two of them decided to give this new sport a try.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe tried it out and it was fun as a new hobby, even though we were terrible at it,\u201d Campbell said with a laugh. \u201cBut we kept going out and got better. I kept beating my dad.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was the first of many.<\/p>\n
She won the Sun Valley Pickleball Classic twice\u2014taking the 3.5-4.0 skill level title in 2023 and the under-3.5 title in 2024\u2014and entered bigger tournaments in Denver and Salt Lake City.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone in the community thought I was going to go pro,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
But Campbell wanted more.<\/p>\n
Something that pickleball\u2014along with the 14 other sports she tried, from Alpine skiing and fencing to jujitsu and horseback riding\u2014hadn\u2019t quite been able to give her. A sense of belonging.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always wanted to be part of a team sport in high school,\u201d she said. \u201cSo I was like, \u2018Well, there\u2019s tennis. It\u2019s just a larger court.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Well, it wasn\u2019t quite that easy.<\/p>\n
Her first practices were a rude awakening. The biggest adjustment wasn\u2019t the court or the movement\u2014it was the power that tennis demands.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was hitting a lot of balls out,\u201d she said. \u201cI was just over-hitting. And then I was hitting a lot of balls into the net. I just didn\u2019t have any power.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Campbell\u2019s pickleball background gave her handy tools like court awareness and an instinct for angles, it doesn\u2019t quite prepare you for the speed and power that tennis demands.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe came out and she had some skills,\u201d Hjort said. \u201cShe had the court placement, and some of the strokes were pretty close to being almost a tennis stroke. I knew there was potential there.\u201d<\/p>\n
He just didn\u2019t know how much.<\/p>\n
Determined to get better, Campbell spent the next three weeks putting in three to four hours a day outside of practice\u2014sometimes as many as six days a week. The work paid off. She developed a formidable forehand\u2014flat, hard and difficult to handle\u2014and by the time the season was officially underway, she had claimed the No. 1 girls singles spot on the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was astonished,\u201d she said. \u201cI never thought I would get that role, especially going into varsity.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a role she never relinquished.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s a great competitor and doesn\u2019t like to lose,\u201d Hjort said. \u201cShe competes all the way to the end.\u201d<\/p>\n
About the only thing Campbell didn\u2019t do during her brief tenure was make it to state\u2014falling in the district semifinals both years with a trip to the postseason just out of reach.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was really close,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
But that didn\u2019t stop her from getting an opportunity at the next level.<\/p>\n
Now Campbell is trading Hailey for Rome, where she\u2019ll play tennis for the Herons at Rome City Institute. The school is an American-style university built specifically for student-athletes, offering competitive programs in 11 sports alongside accredited degree programs.<\/p>\n
She\u2019ll study international business and train on the clay courts of Circolo Canottieri Lazio, a historic tennis club in the heart of Rome that has been a cornerstone of Italian sports culture since 1913. Her contract is for one year, though the door remains open beyond that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m excited and nervous, but the coaches are really nice, and it\u2019s going to be a very fun experience,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
For Hjort, watching one of his players head overseas to play college tennis is exactly what coaching is all about.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe provide these kids with an opportunity and then they can go do what they will with it,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s awesome to see her taking it and using it as a tool to further her education and figure out what she wants to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Campbell hasn\u2019t forgotten her roots.<\/p>\n
She never fully put down her paddle during her two years on the tennis court. The Wood River Pickleball Club made sure she knew it hadn\u2019t forgotten her either\u2014awarding her a $2,500 scholarship to take with her across the Atlantic.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very grateful for that sense of community that I\u2019ve gained from there,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Pickleball hasn\u2019t quite made it to Italy yet. But there\u2019s padel\u2014a fast-growing racquet sport that combines tennis and squash on a smaller enclosed court. Campbell is already eager to give it a try.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seems really difficult, but I\u2019m definitely going to try it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Just like she tried tennis not that long ago. And look where that got her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t expecting to do college tennis at all,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd yet, here I am.\u201d \ufffc<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jamie Hjort has seen a lot in his 12 years at the helm of Wood River tennis. But…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23638,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[16554,27],"class_list":["post-23637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rome","tag-high_school","tag-rome"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}