Tariq Ismail leads YSU men’s tennis team

The best men’s tennis player at Youngstown State University grew up in Zimbabwe (which has a tropical climate), went to high school in Chattanooga Tenn., then spent his first two years of college at the University of Arkansas.

Then Tariq Ismail came to Youngstown. In the winter.

“It was freezing,” he said. “I got bronchitis because I wasn’t used to that kind of cold. I missed a lot of classes that first semester.

“My first season was kind of tough.”

And not just because of the weather.

Ismail had played on two state championship teams at McCallie High School — which has one of the state’s best athletic programs — then competed at in the Southeastern Conference, where his older brother Imraan was already forging a solid career as a Razorback.

After redshirting his first year at Arkansas to rehab a patellar tendon injury he suffered in high school, Ismail realized during the fall season that it would be difficult to secure a permanent position. But, by then, most of the nation’s top programs already had their rosters set. In January of 2009, he applied to YSU because he had a friend on the team who told him the Penguins were looking for players.

“I didn’t even visit,” he said. “I had no idea what I was walking into.”

What he found was a last-place Horizon League program in need of both talent and leadership. After a solid spring — he finished 9-11 playing No. 1, 2 and 3 singles as well as some doubles — he emerged as the team’s best player in 2008-09. He went 2-2 last fall and 9-6 in the spring; unfortunately for him, the Penguins went 1-14 last spring.

“It was tough,” he said.

Read the story in Wednesday’s Vindicator.