Top-ranked Perry weighs options ahead of season
A couple years from now, Luciana Perry will have a difficult decision to make when the time comes to pick which school she wants to play tennis for in college.
For now, though, the main question Perry faces is a simple one — to play high school tennis, or not to play?
“It’s kind of hard to plan, because everything is getting canceled,” Perry said. “Right now, maybe [I’ll play] high school. I’m not really sure.”
Perry, who will be a sophomore in the fall, is ranked as the No. 1 player in Pennsylvania and the No. 13 player in the country in the class of 2023 by the Tennis Recruiting Network. She lives in Export, Pa., which is in the Franklin Regional School District, but she isn’t affiliated with the Panthers or any other high school team — at least not yet.
Like most of the top amateur tennis players in the country, she attends cyber school instead of a traditional brick-and-mortar school, allowing her the freedom to play in major national tournaments year-round without having to worry about missing assignments. She made the decision along with her parents to switch to cyber school in sixth grade so she could spend more time focusing on tennis.
Although it isn’t easy making time to hang out with friends she normally would see every day in class, Perry said the sacrifice has been worth it.
“A lot of the girls that are at my tournaments, I would say about three out of four of them are cyber schooled. I don’t know too many who play high school or go to public school,” Perry said. “When I go to tournaments, I know most of the girls there, and I have a couple friends, so I’m definitely very social. I’m definitely not missing that aspect.”
Of course, Perry doesn’t travel across the country several times a year just to make friends.
It has been about half a year since she last competed in an invitational tournament in February, as every other tournament she has signed up for since has been canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The last tournament she played in was one to remember, though.
Playing in a USTA Level 2 national tournament on the University of Minnesota’s campus, Perry emerged victorious from a bracket of 64 of the top girls tennis players in the nation, capturing her second USTA national-level tournament championship. Her first came two years earlier, when Perry took home first place at a USTA Level 3
national tournament in Bronx, N.Y., when she was only 13.
The only thing left for Perry to do at this point on a national level, it would seem, is to win a USTA Level 1 national tournament. Those are considered the most difficult to win, with brackets featuring 256 top-notch players from all over the country.
Perry has competed in three Level 1 tournaments before, and she has won a pair of matches before losing in the third round each time. Still, she said she believes the competition at a Level 2 tournament is just as fierce, the only difference being the amount of players in the bracket.
“When you go into low Level 1, you actually get a couple easy rounds in the beginning, because they accept more girls,” Perry said. “I think it’s more competitive in Level 2, personally.”
Having gone six months without experiencing the adrenaline rush of a live competition, Perry is itching to get back on the court to play against someone other than her mother, Marianna, a professional instructor who has groomed her tennis skills since she was 2 years old. All of the tournaments she hoped to play in have been canceled all the way through November, though.
That means Perry is going to have to wait a while longer to play again — unless she decides to give high school tennis a go. Franklin Regional’s coach, Howard Fisher, has known Perry since she was a toddler, and her older sister, Natalia — who now plays for William & Mary — played two years for the Panthers before graduating.
“I definitely think it would be cool to go to WPIALs and hopefully states, to represent Franklin Regional,” Perry said. “[Fisher] has always talked to me about playing high school, so I think it would be really nice to play with him, just because he’s always been such a nice person to let us practice at the courts and everything.”
Perry’s decision ultimately will come down to whether the PIAA allows high school sports to take place as planned in the fall. The PIAA board of directors is expected to make an official decision on fall sports Friday, and Perry said hers should come shortly after.
“I’ve never been a part of a team, because tennis is such an individual sport,” Perry said. “So if none of the tournaments are opening up soon, that would definitely increase the chances of me playing high school tennis.
“I think if they decide that sports will be allowed to play in the fall, I’ll definitely think about it more. But right now I’m kind of just trying to wait it out and see what’s going to happen first.”