By Blake Harris | Digital Editor

Nicole West, Santa Monica College Corsair Women's Tennis State Champion for 2022-2023 after completing a perfect 23-0 record season. Photo taken at Santa Monica High, Santa Monica, Calif. on Saturday, Sept 23, 2023. (Akemi Rico | The Corsair)

State tennis champion talks tennis and her life.

After each player made a decisive victory during the first two sets, tied one to one, the crowd anticipated a close third. Nicole West had come a long way and had everything on the line. The Ojai Tennis Tournament is one of North America’s largest amateur tennis tournaments, hosted each year in Ventura County by the California Community College Athletic Association (CCCAA) to crown the singles and doubles champions. After coming up short last year, losing only the final match in the CCCAA Singles State Championship, West stormed all the way back this year with a dominating, perfect 22-0 season.

With her teammates, who traveled all the way to Ojai to support her, and coach Richard Goldenson, who worked tirelessly for this very moment, watching on the sidelines, the outcome of the 2023 CCCAA Singles State Championship fell entirely upon West’s shoulders. “In tennis, you live and die by your own hand,” West says. So it was in that moment, feeling heavy resistance from her opponent, Hana Moss, that West dug in and closed out the championship match with a 6-1 third set.

“The first thing I felt was just the pure relief from the pressure of being the top seed,” West said, reflecting on that moment “I didn’t get super excited until a bit later.” With the championship under her belt and the season a success, West accepted her state tennis title, came home with her friends and family, and immediately continued physical therapy for the serious shoulder injury she had been playing with the whole time.

“We still don't fully know what's going on,” West laughs. The current guess for the injury, she says, may be from her pre-existing tennis elbow. West compensated for the pain in her arm with extra exertion from her shoulder, leading to a severe strain on her muscles and body.

“In the beginning of Summer, for example, my right shoulder was half as strong as my left one. And I don’t use my left one.” She describes the experience for that season, playing with her usual one-handed swing on her right arm, as “not ideal.”

With the season going as well as it was, quitting was not an option. “It was tough on a couple accounts,” she said. “My serve has always been a weapon in my game, and now, since it mainly affected my serve, my serve almost became a liability. That shook a little bit of my confidence.” With her potential future at risk, West talked about how training became a balancing act to preserve her strength and the condition of her arm while maintaining her game feel. “I had to spend a lot of time in recovery, which is something I’m learning to do, and still learning to do. I hate that - recovery, more than anything else,” West said.

She describes her motivation as “working hard on the court, working hard in the gym, it’s the, you know - getting stronger, getting better.” For West, it’s the gratification of getting up everyday and improving her craft that keeps her going every day.

That effort has paid off. Since her first semester at SMC, Nicole West won the doubles Western State Conference of 2022 with her partner Mia Ogebee, was selected as a Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) Scholar athlete, which requires at least a 3.5 GPA, and earned the CCCAA All-American for both 2022 and 2023, an honor given to student athletes who finish in the top ten of the ITA singles rankings.

The drive and motivation that West exudes have always been there according to her mother, Katerina. “It’s funny, because I am not athletic, and her father is not really athletic, her brother is average… From birth she was very athletic,” she said.

When West was only three years old, a family friend found her walking and dribbling a basketball. Along with tennis, West played many sports, including as the quarterback of a football team in elementary school. “She has that Type-A personality. Naturally competitive,” said Katerina. According to her, it was her grandfather, who lived with the family, who initially sparked West’s lifelong pursuit of tennis.

When Katerina reflects on West’s journey with tennis, she goes back to a memory of one of West’s very first games in elementary school, where, right after the coach had informed her that West’s opponent that day was not very good, “Nicole goes on court and loses right away, because she lacked confidence, that was the psychological hurdle.” It’s been watching West overcome that hurdle that keeps Katerina in awe of her daughter. “If she ever said at any time, ‘No, I don't want to play tennis,’ I would have said, okay. But always, she said, ‘No, mom, I want to.’”

Now that West attends California State University, Northridge, the two live very close by and see each other often. CSU not only advances her educational pursuits, but also allows her to play Division 1 tennis like she’s always dreamed and stay in Southern California.

When she’s not playing tennis, West enjoys playing guitar and rock climbing, both of which she describes as hobbies that help her sense of focus. “I really enjoy the aspect of, ‘Okay, I have to have my full concentration on this…’ That’s something I got out of rock climbing, because I, you know, had to have my full attention so I don’t fall.” Now that she has the guitar, she has a creative pursuit which has that same level of attentiveness, but without the added strain on her body “so now I get to do that without also worrying, oh, don't like hurt yourself for tennis.”

In between all this, West teaches tennis near campus. “I can’t think of a better job I could have right now, especially going through school and stuff,” she said. “It’s very rewarding. I especially like teaching the little kids. And there’s a lot of kids who turn to tennis because, like the team sports aren’t working out for them, and so their parents want them to do something active… Shy kids who don’t, you know, prosper in team environments start picking up tennis when they wouldn’t otherwise be playing a sport, so it’s really cool.”

West’s favorite students, however, are teens and pre-teens, students who have room to grow. “They still have the pliability that kids have, in learning and stuff, but also the awareness to actually progress at a higher level,” she said.

West continues to practice and play tennis every day, now at an even higher level at Northridge. While she’s taking business classes currently, and really enjoying them, she’s uncertain about what to do next. “You know, with my whole life being focused on tennis and also having to figure out what I’m gonna do… It’s a weird kind of dichotomy.” For now though, West is focused on playing the sport she loves with the people and teammates who support and love her, and that’s all she really needs.

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