Before Dawn to Division I: St. Louis native Nia Cooper's rise as a role model

I don’t know if you can recall what you were doing at 4 a.m. on a typical weekday when you were in middle school or high school. I can guarantee I wasn’t waking up at that time to go play tennis.

That’s not the case for St. Louis native Nia Cooper, who woke up well before dawn every morning so she could get time on the tennis court before she headed to school.

It takes extra effort to become a role model.

Cooper is now a junior on the NCAA Division I University of Illinois-Chicago women’s tennis team, where she is a trendsetter for young Black girls. She’s quite proud of that.

“I think it’s really cool,” she said. “I feel like a role model, in the sense that little Black girls can look up and see a girl doing it at the highest level collegiately. I want to make sure that I emphasize that there aren’t many of us, and that we’re trying to get more.”

Finding Tennis Early

She learned to play tennis as a child at Net Rushers, a Community Tennis Association designed to introduce tennis to youth in a diverse environment. Her father, who played basketball internationally after college, passed along his athletic genes to her. Her hand-eye coordination was good, and her parents encouraged her to pursue tennis.

It clicked for her quickly and she was a Net Rushers standout, but she still said her early career was “a little rocky.”

Cooper grew up in the St. Louis suburb of Chesterfield, Mo. She played one year of high school tennis at MICDS (Mary Institute and Saint Louis Country Day School). She also played at many of the local clubs, including Frontenac and Sunset in the afternoons.

But while most of her friends were watching television or playing video games, Cooper was getting her homework done early so she could get to bed. That alarm came early.

“That was the easiest time for me to get court time by myself,” she said. “The camps and clinics and all that stuff was in the afternoon, which was nice. But if you wanted one-on-one time, you basically had to do it before school.”

She credited her coach, LD Jones, who not only introduced her to tennis, but also was willing to get up early himself to provide her with that training.

“I was OK,” Cooper said of her junior career. “I was very dedicated. I would be out there more so fighting than being a good tennis player. I had a lot of good wins, though. I had a couple of wins over girls who are still playing in college.”