Ottawa’s Emma Cushing and Rylee O’Fallon are the 2023 Times Tennis Players of the Year

Ottawa seniors Emma Cushing and Rylee O’Fallon consider themselves a pretty good team on and off the tennis court.

“[Rylee] has always had my back and we’ve been best friends since the first grade at Mckinley Elementary School,” Cushing said. “We’ve gone through a lot with each [other] growing up and being tennis partners. We go out to eat, we hang out, we laugh until we cry ... I mean we just have the best times when we are together. This season on the court was as fun as it gets.”

As the Pirates girls tennis No. 1 doubles team this season, Cushing and O’Fallon put together quite a resume, finishing with an eye-popping 33-7 record, winning championships at both the Interstate 8 Conference Tournament and Class 1A La Salle-Peru Sectional and topping the season off with a solid 5-2 record at the IHSA Class 1A State Finals, good enough to put sixth-place medals around their necks. They both were named to the 1A All-State first team.

All of that success also earned them being named the 2023 Times Tennis Players of the Year.

“One of our goals coming into the season was to win our sectional, and we knew if we could do that it meant we would go to state,” O’Fallon said. “We also wanted to be a seeded team at state and also advance farther than we both did our junior season.

“We exceeded both of those goals.”

Both said they started playing tennis at a young age and have played multiple sports as they’ve grown up, but they each said tennis was the game that they love the most.

The two played as doubles partners as sophomores, winning the No. 2 doubles title at the I-8 meet, but as juniors to make the team stronger, Cushing played singles while O’Fallon teamed with Jenna Smithmeyer and earned the 2022 Times Tennis Players of the Year award. The three all advanced to the state meet.

“I actually think, at least for me, even with having the state experience last year it was a little more stressful at state this year because we had the 5-8 seed,” Cushing said. “I felt like it was great we had that seed, but I also felt in some way we needed to live up to it. I think the stress left after we won our first match.”

Prior to state, Cushing and O’Fallon helped the Pirates to the I-8 team title by winning the No. 1 doubles championship match over Rochelle 6-4, 7-5.

Then at the La Salle-Peru Sectional, the twosome topped Morris’ Meghan Bzdill and Shreya Patel 6-1, 6-3 in the semifinals, then defeated Pontiac’s Brooke Burger and Olivia Masching 6-1, 6-1 in the championship match.

At the state meet, Cushing and O’Fallon won their opening three matches, dropping just five games. They then suffered their first loss but bounced back to take the next two – the second in a third-set tiebreaker – in the consolation bracket. Their season ended with a 6-3, 6-4 loss in the fifth-place match. As a team, Ottawa finished tied for 10th.

Asked what they felt the other strengths were, neither wasted little time with their answers.

“Rylee’s strength is her volleys, she’s a beast at the net,” Cushing said. “When I’m back on the baseline I never have to worry about having to hit any balls in the middle because she was going to pouch those shots before they would have a chance to get to me. She also is very good with her serves and when you have a partner that can serve well it makes your job at the net that much easier.”

“Emma’s strength is at the baseline, which is why I feel we made such a great team,” O’Fallon said. “I’m always trying to get to every shot when I’m at the net, but I also know if I can get it, Emma is going to be there. She is very good at keeping the ball in play and that strength allowed us to get multiple chances to put points away.

Following graduation this spring, both have ambitions to enter the medical field. Cushing said she’ll be heading to the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana to major in biochemistry or nutrition to become either a doctor or pharmacist. O’Fallon said she’ll be either enrolling at the University of Iowa or University of Arizona to major in nursing.

“I feel like, even though we finished sixth at state, we played some of the best tennis we had all season at state.

“It was a great way to end our high school careers.”