By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider

Blair Shankle might want to check with the Guinness Book of World Records on the tennis player with the thickest skin.

Instead of bristling at Baylor coach Joey Scrivano's sometimes scathing criticism, the sophomore from Dallas has actually embraced it.

"I would much rather have people tell me what I need to improve on a daily basis," said Shankle, an All-Big 12 pick in singles and doubles who is ranked 41st nationally in singles and 14th in doubles with senior Ema Burgic. "Obviously, be encouraging. But if you're not honest with your players, then they don't know what they need to work on. I'm someone that likes to have a plan laid out on what I need to do. And I'll take the criticism when it happens."

With Scrivano, the criticism came before Shankle even got here. Sitting in the coach's office on a recruiting visit, the then-17-year-old tennis phenom asked him, "What do I need to improve in my game?' and he responded, "Everything."

"I was looking at him and trying not to look shocked," said Shankle, who had been the top-ranked junior player in Texas since she was 13 or 14 years old. "I was like, `Wow!' I felt like I had had a pretty good career, but when he said that, I was like, `This guy is serious.'''

The truth is, though, Scrivano saw something in Shankle's game when other college coaches were starting to have doubts. When she made the move to play more international tournaments at an early age, and struggled, "I think that put questions in a lot of coaches' minds."

"When you go to the next level, you see it all the time, you start trying to do too much," Scrivano said. "I felt like she went away from just the fundamentals of her game. She started over-playing. And when you over-play in this sport, you make errors. And when you make errors, you lose. But I wasn't buying into the whole, `Maybe she's hit her ceiling,' because that was the word on the street. She was as good as she's going to get; she's on the decline. And I didn't buy that because of all of her intangibles."

The book on Shankle was that she was willing to put in the work. And when she got on the court, she would fight her butt off and compete to make it happen.

"Those were the things that stood out," Scrivano said, "that told me we needed a player like that, that's really into putting in the work."

Playing predominantly at the No. 4 singles position, Shankle compiled a team-best 34-5 record last season as a freshman and was a stunning 24-2 in dual matches. She helped the Lady Bears sweep the Big 12 regular-season and tournament titles and get back to the Round of 16 in the NCAA Championship, scoring the only point in a 4-1 loss to Virginia.

On top of that, Shankle earned All-America honors in doubles, reaching the quarterfinals with Victoria Kisialeva.

"One of my goals was just to get in the singles lineup. I didn't care where I started. I wanted to start low, because I knew that would mean it was a great team and I would have to work my way up," she said. "And that's pretty much what happened. I felt pretty confident with my doubles, just because I feel like I'm pretty competent at the net."

The turning point this season came back in the fall, when Scrivano "asked her to do some things that she was not comfortable doing." That included incorporating more serve-and-volley attack in her game and improving her return game.

"She had to make a decision: Am I going to continue to trust this guy, or am I going to do it my way?" Scrivano said. "And to her credit, she just embraced it. That was big. . . . A lot of players would have tuned me out after that and said, `I won 30-something matches last year. Who cares what you think?' And she did the opposite. She embraced it and said, `OK, is this what I need to do?' And she did a great job."

Asked to move up in the lineup this season, Shankle is a team-best 26-6 overall and 20-2 in dual-match play - with all of those matches coming at the top three spots. Playing with five different partners in doubles, she is 21-6 overall and 15-5 in dual matches.

Even with that kind of success, though, Scrivano still found a fatal flaw.

About a month after Shankle lost a three-setter to Florida's Josie Kuhlman at the USTA/ITA National Indoor Intercollegiate in New York, the coach reviewed the match video and "ripped into her" with a text message that pointed out the "50-something" unforced forehand errors.

"I told her, `Great players, their forehands are weapons. Your forehand is a weakness,''' Scrivano said. "And it's not because you don't have the potential to hit a great forehand, it's just discipline. That was another one of those times where she could have easily been like, `Whatever.' And she embraced it."

Over the Christmas break, Shankle met with her coach and went over the video, watching each painstaking mistake over and over again.

"That's the last thing kids want to do is hang out with their coach and go over film on their Christmas holiday," Scrivano said. "But she was like, `OK, let's do it.'''

Balancing out the criticism with praise, Scrivano believes that her "ceiling is very high."

"Here's the deal, she loves it," he said. "She loves to compete, she loves to practice, she loves to go over video. She loves to do anything that helps her get better. She's tough. . . . Every part of her body is hurting right now, but you'd never know. She just plays through it. And she's incredibly teachable. Those are three things that you have to have if you want to be a top college player or professional player, and she's got them all."

Coming off a Big 12 tournament sweep that saw the Lady Bears beat Kansas State, TCU and Texas Tech by 4-0 scores, Baylor opens the NCAA Championship at home with a first-round match against Northwestern State (16-8) at 2 p.m. Saturday at the Hurd Tennis Center.

"It's been a great week of just recovering from the Big 12 tournament," Scrivano said. "And now, we're just trying to get ourselves ramped up again. This is the pinnacle of your season, the NCAA Championship. And we're ready to go. We can't wait to get out there and start matches. We're sick of practice, to be honest with you."

Shankle, who has won 11 straight decisions in singles, said the Big 12 tournament "showed what we can do when everyone's healthy and everyone's on the same page."

"Obviously in the NCAAs, anything can happen," she said. "Everyone wants to continue their run. We just have to be the same and just keep working hard and focusing on the right things and not the outcome."

Did You Know?
Shankle, who also considered Texas A&M and Texas during tecruiting, said she "couldn't have asked to make a better decision. . . . (The coaches) care for you, not just about you being a tennis player but also being a better person. If you can develop here as a tennis player, you're also developing as a person. It's unbelievable."