Jo-Yee Chan took a deep breath while grasping her racquet in one hand and caressing the fuzz of the ball in another. Buzz has surrounded Chan’s mind recently as she’s been labeled the newest face of the Oregon women’s tennis team in 2023.
At that moment, though, she was focused on the far side of the court in front of her. Then, she threw the ball up, and as it briefly floated she slammed down her racquet and served.
The freshman from Sugar Hill, Georgia, was a highly-ranked high school recruit. Her flashy debut before the spring season began foregrounded her talent and placed her at the forefront of the Ducks women’s tennis community.
Along with Japanese international student Misaki Kobayashi, Chan is also notable in regard to her Asian American identity in a majority-white team. Although Chan is not the first Asian American to play at Oregon, her performance serves as a cipher for raising racial consciousness within the tennis community.
As the face of her team, Chan’s role shares resemblances to past players who attempted to revolutionize women’s tennis and the increased effort of uplifting minorities within the larger international narrative.
University of Oregon’s women’s tennis is historically a white-dominated sport. This is not a surprise due to Oregon’s 86.2% white population. Although there has been the representation of international players, it is often two players on average who are women of color.
As a result of this history, one of the common experiences minority players deal with are the uncomfortable sensations of navigating themselves within a white-dominated space.
Chan first became cognizant of this specific feeling when she started her journey in the South around Georgia. She described it as a “tension in the air” that accompanied her in her matches.
“I started playing tennis because of my brother,” Chan said. “But once I started growing older, I knew there were mostly white people around me. And it was difficult sometimes because I would be around all my tennis friends, and I did not feel included.”
Chan thinks that the reasons for this lack of representation in tennis could be explained within the context of class.
“Although tennis is now pretty well-known in the world, it’s not something that girls would easily pick up,” Chan said. “Tennis has always kinda been known as a ‘country club sport.’ I feel like girls pick up soccer or other sports instead.”
Junior Uxia Martinez Moral from Spain feels that the lack of representation in her specific country derives from the absence of structural support in sports.
“I honestly appreciate how much the United States values sports,” Martinez Moral said. “I feel like when I was a kid in high school, back home, I didn’t have a lot of opportunities. If you want to do it in a higher level and you want to travel a little. It’s more difficult.”
In the context of women’s tennis internationally, Li Na was the pioneer for burgeoning the representation of Asian women in tennis. Li was born and raised in Wuhan, China. She won the French Open in 2011 and became the first Asian player — woman or man — to win a Grand Slam singles title.
Shortly after Li, was the emergence of Venus and Serena Williams who were unabashed about their Black identities on the courts. They rejected tennis social norms and instead chose activism to progress social justice within the Women’s Tennis Association.
Efforts like Li’s, Venus’ and Serena’s elucidated the need for uplifting inclusivity and diversity in tennis. Chan said she started to feel this change after her junior year of high school.
“There’s like a lot of camps around my area, in Georgia, that [are] advocating for inclusivity, and I’ve actually done some of those camps too. So it’s been really nice to see different races picked up like tennis because I know it’s just predominantly in white.”
Chan feels that Asian Americans are overall well represented in college tennis, but “there’s not a lot of exposure around Asian Americans communities specifically.”
Chan and the other women of color players featured on this year’s team will hopefully inspire diverse junior players hoping to represent their own communities in college. This uplifting of inclusivity and diversity will continue to change the future of the Oregon women’s tennis history. She’s one of many who are trying to raise awareness of these greater structural issues within her sport’s industry and uplift social justice.
Freshman Jo-Yee Chan readies herself for a serve in the Student Tennis Center at the University of Oregon. (Photo Credit: Molly McPherson)
