Winning Mentality: Taylor Garcia ’22 The pro pickleball player has her sights set on breaking into the top 10 singles rankings.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of W&L: The Washington and Lee Magazine.

Taylor Garcia ’22 vividly recalls the moment on her campus tour when she envisioned herself attending Washington and Lee University. What she didn’t anticipate was what lay ahead, including a post-graduate athletic career as a professional pickleball player.

Garcia had made a name for herself as a four-year letter winner on the tennis and soccer teams at Mount Carmel Academy in her hometown of Mandeville, Louisiana. She played for the 2018 Louisiana High School Athletic Association Division I tennis regional championship team, was a four-time individual singles regional champion (2015-18), two-time individual singles state champion (2015, 2017) and a two-time Louisiana High School Girls Tennis Player of the Year those same years. Garcia, who graduated high school summa cum laude, knew she wanted an academic challenge as much as an athletic one in her college experience. She looked at a variety of schools, but 10 minutes into her tour at W&L, Garcia turned to her mother and said, “I’m coming to school here.”

Garcia remains one of the most decorated tennis players in W&L’s history — she was a two-time singles All-American and NCAA individual qualifier (2021 and 2022), the 2022 ITA Regional Senior Player of the Year, the 2021 Old Dominion Athletic Conference Player of the Year and reached career-high national rankings of No. 15 in singles and No. 19 in doubles.

“I absolutely loved my teammates and my coach. I loved feeling like I was part of something bigger than just myself,” Garcia says of her time on the tennis team.

Despite her busy schedule as a student-athlete and international politics major, Garcia found time at W&L to serve as Panhellenic Council president, volunteer with Campus Kitchen and spend a summer studying abroad in Spain. Erin Ness, W&L’s head women’s tennis coach, has known Garcia since she was a high school recruit and said while her reflexes and speed are natural assets on the tennis and pickleball courts, it’s Garcia’s spirit and drive that fuel her.

“She just brought so much fire and so much energy to the team,” Ness says. “She was the heart and soul of our program.

She keeps raising the bar for herself, and that’s how she’s always been — she’s got a plan she’s going to follow, and she rarely deviates from it. It’s been fun watching her become so successful at this.”

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic “fifth-year” eligibility rule, Garcia played tennis for one year at George Mason University while completing her master’s in international security. She competed in the No. 1 doubles and No. 2 singles positions, gained all-conference second-team honors and led the team with 15 wins on the season.

While still playing tennis for GMU, Garcia saw an ad for a pickleball tournament in nearby Chantilly, Virginia, and decided to enter the January 2023 competition for fun. However, she had only begun practicing pickleball regularly in April 2023 when another player encouraged her to sign up for her first professional tournament the following month. That was the catalyst.

“I realized that if I trained for this the way I trained in tennis, I could be good,” Garcia says. “My last tennis season ended April 19, and I haven’t touched a tennis racket since. I’ve only played pickleball — every single day. I just started training as hard as I could.”

Once Garcia decided to take her pickleball career to the next level, she quickly rose through the ranks in the professional scene. Despite starting midway through, she finished the 2023 season at No. 15 in the Professional Pickleball Association (PPA) Tour singles rankings. In PPA rankings, she is currently ranked 48th in women’s doubles, 57th in mixed doubles and 17th in women’s singles. She also quickly attracted the attention of sponsors, who have helped her continue to attend tournaments around the country almost every weekend.

“I’ve always just been a fiery competitor,” Garcia says, “and in anything that I did, I always tried to do my best. When I began playing pickleball, I didn’t even know how to keep score. But I knew I wanted to win.” She initially set a goal for herself to reach the top 10 in women’s singles within her first year.

Garcia is balancing her professional pickleball ambitions with her long-term career plans. In November 2023, Garcia accepted a position as a senior federal affairs analyst in global government affairs at RTX, the world’s largest aerospace and defense company. She plans to pursue a career in the defense industry and is thankful she can juggle her tournament schedule with gaining valuable professional experience in international security.

“I look back and am so thankful for how W&L challenged me,” Garcia says. “Now, I feel like I’m so well prepared to take on new classes, challenges and experiences. My master’s degree enhanced my education, but it was formed by my undergraduate years at W&L.”