Female Most Valuable Athlete: Maddie Durso

Name: Maddie Durso

School: Batavia, senior

Sport: Tennis

Why she was selected: Durso won her 100th career varsity match, as she and doubles partner Leah Puttin improved to 25-1 on the season. Chronicle sports reporter Jacob Bartelson caught up with Durso to discuss her season and more. Below is an edited transcript.

Bartelson: When you reflect upon all the time you put in to getting those 100 career wins, what makes you so proud about that?

Durso: What makes me so proud about that is to see the growth over the years. I started actually in fourth grade after my current high school coach [Brad Nelson], he was my teacher and he told me to start playing. Since then, I've just put so much time into it. Freshman year, I had a partner who was trying to get to 100 wins. Unfortunately, she didn't, but since then, I've always had the goal of getting to 100 wins.

Bartelson: Why is tennis so important to you?

Durso: Tennis is very important to me because it's a way for me to just de-stress. I find myself really stressed out lately, and just going to practice gives me a safe place to just get all my energy out and stress out from the day.

Bartelson: Is there a tennis athlete or two that you look up to as a role model?

Durso: I've always looked up to Serena Williams because she's just such a big icon for women's tennis. I've always followed her and now one of the new players that I really look up to is CoCo [Gauff]. She's only 15 years old, and she's been in all these tournaments. She's just amazing how much dedication she puts in and how well she does.

Bartelson: What's something outside of tennis that you're passionate about?

Durso: [It] would probably be business. I'm actually taking an incubator course here at Batavia where we get with groups and we design a product. Then, we work with mentors to just try and develop that over the course of the year. ... I hope to study business in the future.