A Big South Player of the Year Winthrop Tennis Alumni and helps paint a picture of the successes of the tennis program six years after becoming defunct.
Omar Woods
Sports Editor
Starting in 1994, the Winthrop tennis program showed it was anything but unsuccessful. In its time, the program was able to produce many major wins in both the men’s and women’s division of the program.
The women’s tennis team was able to secure a whopping 21 Big South Championship titles during their time. Along with these wins, they would also secure three runner-up finishes and secure 17 NCAA tournament appearances. The men’s tennis team was just as successful as they were able to secure nine regular season championships and 12 runner-up finishes.
The tennis program’s successful run would soon come to a shocking and abrupt end. On June 19th in 2020, the Board of Trustees at Winthrop voted to end both the men’s and women’s tennis program for the foreseeable future.
Winthrop University put out a statement on their website after the breaking news explaining that this decision was decided upon based on the financial impacts caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics, Ken Haplin, expressed that he never thought that the university would have to come down to make such a heartbreaking decision.
Due to the gap of time since the program’s absence, it is likely that most current students at Winthrop will not experience a Winthrop that offers tennis as a sport on campus. Lauren Proctor, a Winthrop tennis alumna and Big South Player of the Year, discussed her experiences and highlights while spending her four years competing for Winthrop University.
“Every year we won the conference tournament was a massive highlight,” Proctor said.
“I would say the absolute biggest highlight of all-time, though, was winning the first round of NCAA in my junior year which would have been in 2018. That was the biggest accomplishment or highlight for sure.”
Proctor started her college career in the 2016 season for the women’s division in tennis. In her freshman year, she earned accolades such as the Freshman of the Year award and the Big South conference player of the year.
In fact, Proctor would end up being voted the conference player for all of her four years at Winthrop. She credits much of her success on the tennis court to coach Alcides “Cid” Carvalho, who had been a coach for the program for nearly three decades and was also an 1981 alumnus of Winthrop University.
“Going into that program with Cid having been head coach for close to thirty years at that point, he obviously had a winning system in place. That’s for sure,” Proctor said.
“He knew exactly what we needed to do to be successful and win the conference tournaments every year and make it to NCAA and nationals. He was tremendously effective.”
Just like the rest of the athletic department when the news broke that the tennis program was to be no longer, Proctor was disheartened. She described her immediate feelings towards finding out the tennis program was getting cut.
“It was devastating I would say to be honest,” Proctor said.
“I have very long ties to Cid and Winthrop. The first time I ever trained with him was when I was nine years old. He’s family for me in a way and both of us had a lot of love for the program.”
Proctor mentioned interest in wanting to see the program return to Winthrop. She believed that a college with such a successful history in tennis should not be overlooked.
“For a school and program to have the history of success that it does, of course I would love to see it make a comeback and make a return,” Proctor said.
“Gardner-Webb just cut their women’s tennis program. It’s the last year it’s going to exist. It’s sad to see these things happen. For the sake of that conference, it just would be really great to have the program come back with its history as well. I have no doubt that it would have support from alumni and people who have been a part of it,” Proctor said.
“It was just a great program.”
