Woodrow Wilson junior Ethan Shepard grew up spending most of his free time on the basketball court.
Then another sport came calling.
Lurking inside the budding hoop standout was a tennis player just waiting to burst on the scene.
“We had gone out here and there to hit, but nothing intense,” Ethan Shepard said. “Over Covid when we couldn’t do much, we would come out (to Woodrow Wilson High School) and hit. That is the first time I had given much thought to playing.”
Ethan’s hitting partner was his dad, Marc Shepard, who was an accomplished tennis player in his younger days.
The elder Shepard played his junior and senior year at Baileysville High School and went on to play four years at Concord University.
“Ethan had played zero tennis. Me being a tennis player, I always wanted to get him into tennis. I took him out every year since he was young and tried to get him interested – zero interest,” Marc said.
Prior to Ethan’s freshman year at Woodrow Wilson, his dad gave it one more try.
“I had pretty much given up on him playing tennis. That summer before before 9th-grade, I asked him one more time if he wanted to go out and hit some,” Marc said. “He had matured some and he was a better athlete I feel like from playing basketball. Tennis came a little more natural too him.”
One of Ethan’s biggest strengths, even at a young age, was a strong work ethic. He applied that grind to tennis right from the start.
“He said he was going to put in the work over that summer and make the tennis team the next year,” Marc said. “That summer we came out almost every day and we hit for a couple of hours. He picked it up really quickly and did a nice job.”
While playing tennis might seem like a simple choice and a sport he was almost destined to play, it was not quite that simple.
“He started playing basketball at the (YMCA),” Marc said. “He got hooked up with a little travel team. He played in elementary school, middle school and kept upping his travel team. By the time he stopped he was playing for one of the better travel teams in the area.”
“He played basketball his freshman year at Woodrow,” Marc went on to say. “He had a solid year as part of the freshman team and played some JV basketball. If he had stuck with it, I feel like he would have been a varsity player.”
Following his freshman year, Ethan made a big decision concerning the sport he loved from such a young age.
“My 9th-grade year I started out playing basketball, but I played tennis that year too. The transition from my 9th-grade year to my 10th-grade year I switched from playing travel basketball to going to tennis tournaments,” Ethan explained. “I kind of fell out of love with basketball and more into tennis. It started from there.”
As could be expected, the decision was extremely hard on both Ethan and his dad.
“It was tough. We had been doing basketball since he was in third grade. It was every summer, travel, travel, travel and practice, practice, practice,” Marc said. “You can imagine the hours that me and him spent in our driveway putting in work. I still miss him being out there, but at the same time I don’t regret it. We are having a great time doing tennis and he is very happy.”
Ethan echoed his dad’s sentiments.
“It was a big decision, definitely,” Ethan said. “To change from a sport that I had played my whole life to a sport that I had only played for one year was definitely a hard decision.”
Following a solid freshman tennis season, Ethan really started to blossom as a sophomore where he went 15-5 in singles play.
Advancing to the state tournament he defeated the No. 4 singles champion from the previous year and picked up a win in doubles. His efforts helped lead the Flying Eagles to a top-5 team finish.
“I definitely played better at tennis from the start than most other sports I had played,” Ethan said. “When I first started I had the basics down. As I went on it was more about tweaking minute details and working to get to the next level. I can hit a lot harder than I used to be able to. I can also control the ball better. It’s just practice.”
Although the season is young, Shepard has won his first five matches so far this season playing No. 2 singles.
Combining with fellow junior Ram Asaithambi, they have also won their first five No. 1 doubles matches this year in convincing fashion.
Asaithambi finished in the top-8 at the state tournament last year and top-4 in doubles. Ethan credits his teammate with some of his own growth as well.
“It really helps. It is always great to play with, and against, somebody that is better than you,” Ethan said. “That is how you get better.”
The biggest tennis growth came over this past summer when Ethan hit the travel tennis circuit with the same vigor that he had over the years for basketball.
“Ethan has played some adult competition,” Marc said. “He has won tournaments in Charlotte, N.C. He won two tournaments in Ashland, Ky. and he won a tournament in Cincinnati, Ohio. Over the summer he has won probably six or seven tournaments. There were three or four others where he came in second place.”
One of the second place finishes came in a prestigious event here in the Mountain State.
“He finished second place at the Charleston Public Courts 16-under Tournament. Anytime you do good in one of the Charleston events you have done well. They have nice draws,” Marc said. “He got to see a lot of different levels of competition and different styles of play. This summer I have seen a big rise in his consistency. His serve has come together and it is like a weapon he can use.”
The work over the summer has been a huge confidence boost for the junior standout as well.
“I felt like I was getting better, but this summer I felt like I made the jump to the next level,” Ethan said. “If I played a match between myself right now and myself last year, I would beat my old self pretty bad. I feel like I took a huge jump.”
While Ethan admits that he has enjoyed the ride this summer seeing all of his hard work paying off, he still feels he has some catching up to do on the court.
“I feel like in comparison to where I was in basketball to where I am in tennis across the state, I am now at a higher level for tennis than I was in basketball,” Ethan said. “A lot of the people that are playing around me though have been playing all of their life. Where I have only played for about three years, I can still tell the experience difference. They seem levels ahead of me at times.”
While dad agrees with his son, he also feels Ethan is close to breaking through.
“For one, he hadn’t played, so he has been doing a lot of catch-up with the guys that have been doing this since they were little kids,” Marc said. “He is on the fringe of getting in that top level of West Virginia tennis. He is not there quite yet, but he is knocking on the door.”
