Tennis
Favorite athlete: Gaol Monfils
Favorite team: Kentucky Wildcats
Favorite memory competing in sports: Winning on senior night!
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: I slipped on the courts at Christopher Dock and wiped out trying to run down a ball.
Music on iPod: Anything and everything! (Broadway, bluegrass, and alternative/punk rock)
Future plans: Attend a good college and medical school, eventually become a psychiatrist.
Words to live by: “It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." --Albus Dumbledore
One goal before turning 30: Travel the world
One thing people don’t know about me: I’ve always wanted to join the circus!
By GORDON GLANTZ
File this one under “Fact is Stranger than Fiction.”
When she was younger, Ali Tomasevich did not get a warm and fuzzy feeling about tennis, and with just cause.
She often found herself cast in the role of ball girl while father, Stan, and her older sister, Jenna, got to have all the fun.
But in seventh grade, more on a whim than anything else, she decided to give the family game a chance. She and neighbor/close friend Celia Frattarelli decided to take lessons from Monica Bach.
Tomasevich and Fratterelli kidded each other about maybe one day they would be following in Jenna Tomasevich’s sneaker steps and play for Souderton.
Two years later, there she was, playing fourth doubles as a freshman, and all the older girls she looked up to were the same freshmen that Jenna has taken under her wing as a senior.
Ali, the Univest Female Featured Athlete of Week, made the quantum leap to second singles as a sophomore and first singles the last two years.
“We lost nine seniors,” she said. “I kind of got thrown up.”
And thrown to the wolves.
Tomasevich, as defined by her role, was forced to face some of the best high school players in the Suburban One League.
Not far behind was Fratterelli, who has been the No. 2 singles player.
And this past year, the two friends who were only half-serious about playing for Souderton, let alone being the top two singles players, were co-captains.
“Who would’ve thought, five years later, we would end up here,” said Tomasevich, whose mother, Donna, heads up the tennis team’s booster club.
Topping it all off, their coach at Souderton was the same woman, who gave them private lessons as a tweens, affectionately known as “Coach Monica” Bach.
Rip up the “Fact is Stranger than Fiction” file.
Just file it under “Way Cool.”
Bittersweet Symphony
Even with a litany of other activities, Tomasevich admits that the end of her high school tennis career is difficult to accept.
“When I first starting playing first singles, I was not at all at that level yet,” said Tomasevich, who heaps praise upon Bach and the team’s assistant coach Keith Everett. “It took me a while to get there.”
As far as post-season success, most of it came in league doubles a year, pairing up with one of the third singles players and reaching the second round of the league tournament.
“I gave it my all, but it was kind of sad,” she said of her career ending. “But, I’m going to keep on playing.”
And she scored a personal victory recently, topping her father, Stan, for the first time in her life – not counting when he was recovering from knee surgery.
“He’s been playing his whole life,” she said. “I finally beat him the other day. That was exciting.”
Leader by Example
For Bach, the value of Tomasevich cannot be measured in won-loss record.
She is a role model who takes her leadership role seriously.
“Ali is not your typical 18-year-old,” said the coach. “She’s different; very mature for her age. She’s always very calm. I’ve known her since seventh grade, and coached her here the last three years. She’s always the same person every day. No ups and downs. She excels in the classroom. She never complains.
“She plays No. 1 singles for us, which means she draws the toughest girl from the other team. Unlike some of those girls she faces, she doesn’t play year-round. Tennis is not her whole life. It’s part of her life. She’s very well-rounded.
“She’s always positive. Never makes excuses. She’s just a great role model to the younger girls. She’s always positive. You never hear a negative word come out of her mouth. She gets along with everybody.”
And this can be seen in her actions, not just words.
When Tomasevich is done with her matches, though not always netting the intended result, she finds another match and cheers on a teammate.
“The minute she is done, win or lose, she is not on her phone or anything,” said Bach. “She goes and cheers someone else on.”
Tomasevich shrugs it off, saying she is just taking the positive vibes she got from older teammates as a newbie and paying it forward.
“I look at some of the younger kids, and I remember being in their spot, getting beat up,” she said. “I know how nice it feels to have someone cheering you on.
“And I like seeing my teammates do well.”
The reaching out to the freshmen and first-year sophomores on the team extends beyond the court.
She and Fratterelli have taken it outside the lines with “team bonding” activities like movie nights, etc.
“It’s an opportunity for the girls to get to know each other,” she said. “It makes it less intimidating."
The Social Activist
Part of the reason Tomasevich has empathy for her younger teammates could be the aspiring psychiatrist’s sincere concern for the human condition.
“I wanted to be a psychiatrist for a while,” said Tomasevich, who is looking at several smaller liberal arts schools in New England but has yet to narrow her list. “I want to help people, and it seems like a good way to go.”
This can be seen in her friendship with her co-captain and longtime tennis partner, whose father has been stationed in the Middle East with the Air Force.
“It has been rough on the whole family,” said Tomasevich. “We have become closer and closer. It helps that Celia is my neighbor.”
And as is the case with taking her captaincy of the tennis team beyond the court, she is ready to be a leader in testing societal boundaries.
"I would definitely consider myself a social activist,” explained Tomasevich, who is one of two Souderton students selected for a prestigious internship program at Lansdale Hospital, an experience she finds “very cool” when she makes rounds with doctors. “I'm very passionate about mental health advocacy, LGBTQ rights, and women's rights.”
“I'm also a bit unconventional,” she added. “As a way of challenging gender roles, I stopped shaving my armpits before tennis season started this year. It's actually been a better experience than I was expecting, and it's also been a great conversation starter. I've been able to get some of my teammates and friends (even those who were initially disgusted) to really think about why body hair on a woman was so foreign to them and why, in their minds, it would be any more unclean than it is on a man."
Outside The Box
Tomasevich, who says she always wanted to run away and join the circus, relishes being well-rounded.
“I do a lot of things,” said Tomasevich, who credits 10thgrade Latin teacher, Carol Ramsey, for a being a “fantastic role model” and “cheerleader” and getting her to come out of her shell and “put myself out there.”
And that has been what she has been all about ever since.
“I don’t think anybody can put me in a box,” she said.
A list of her activities outside of tennis only included one scholastic sport – a junior stint as a diver that resulted in a sprained neck – runs the gamut from the school’s high-end Robotics squad, for which she is also a captain, to competing in the Academic Challenge against other schools and National History Day (her documentaries were on the evolution of side shows and protest music of the Vietnam War while her group did a musical on the history of AA last year and earned third place in states).
She also plays the piano, volunteers in a community theater and has been singing in a choir since fifth grade. This choir has toured Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Ireland and Canada.
And that’s just to name a few.
“Her plate is full,” said Bach. “She is involved in music, playing the piano and signing in a choir. She cares a lot about school. I often wonder how she can maintain those grades and do everything she does.”
Tomasevich, who says she “values her sleep” to the extent that she will go to the bed at a sane hour and wake up to tackle stray schoolwork, has a quick answer.
“I make time for what I love and what I care about,” she said. “You can always make time if you want something bad enough.”
But that doesn’t mean that decisions didn’t have to be made. The biggest hurdle came as a junior.
"Last year I was taking four AP classes and a college course, in addition to two varsity sports and all of my other extracurricular activities,” she said. “It was the first time I'd ever felt as though there truly weren't enough hours in the day. I had to sink a little before I learned to swim, so to speak, but I ended up dropping one of my AP classes and finding a great support system in the process.
“One phrase my mom kept repeating to me throughout the year was that all she cared about was that I was happy and healthy. Over time, I ended up adopting that as my own personal mantra - "happy and healthy." While I believe that school is important, I wholeheartedly believe health, both mental and physical, should come first. This doesn't mean that I am by any means a slacker; it means that rather than striving for absolute perfection, I do the best I can with the time I have."
Add a second one to the “Way Cool” file – especially when the facts about Ali Tomasevich are stranger, albeit in a good way, than fiction.
