Net Play

Advantage Pitt with this winning athlete

The long-limbed tennis player focuses her gaze across the net. Her chestnut hair is pushed back, away from her face, and a ponytail cascades down her neck. She concentrates on the opposite side of the court, eyeing the spot where she wants to jam the tennis ball. Sporadically, she chews a piece of gum, which she popped into her mouth during warm-up. She leans forward and bounces the ball, getting ready to serve. She shifts back onto her right foot, launches the ball above her head, then Whoommph! Her black-and-yellow Gamma racquet slashes the air. The ball rockets over the net and into the court’s far corner before her opponent is able to react. It’s another ace for Kristy Borza.

A psychology major, Borza has been Number One on the Pitt tennis team since she hit campus in fall 2005 and began amassing a trove of records. An aggressive all-court player, she’s the first Panther to earn an Intercollegiate Tennis Association ranking and the only Big East player to rank in the East Region. She’s the first Pitt player to win the Women’s Eastern Collegiate Invitational. She racked up 100 victories faster than any Pitt tennis player, and her career singles stat is an impressive 81 wins-23 losses, another school record. With her senior year still ahead, Borza already holds Pitt’s all-time win record, with 143 victories.

Her intensity, as sharp as her laser serves, follows her to practice, where her friends nudge her to ease up, so they can have time to sit and talk. Among her fans is older sister Nikki (A&S ’03), a former Pitt tennis player and now a volunteer assistant coach for the team. Growing up in a family where her parents and two sisters all played tennis, Borza says that even routinefamily matches were competitive battles.

Borza first picked up a racquet at age 3. For as long as anyone can remember, there she was on court, in her signature ponytail, headband, and wristband. A naturally gifted athlete, she also excelled at basketball, baseball, and powder puff football growing up in Beaver, Pa. In her early teens, she twice made it to the regional final of the NFL Punt, Pass, and Kick girls’ division. Those pursuits faded, but Borza’s passion for tennis never did.

She began her freshman year on Pitt’s team with eight straight victories. Since then, she has broken a Pitt record for single-season wins, has become the first player to be voted by her teammates as Most Valuable Player three seasons in a row, and she has been named a Big East Academic All-Star.

Her accomplishments aren’t so surprising. Nearly 15 years ago, her first-grade teacher gave a homework assignment to write a book. Borza returned to class with Tennis Sister, a story scrawled in the big, blocky alphabet of a 6-year-old. It chronicled two champions of the asphalt court. Attached to the last page was a photograph of two girls gripping a trophy—Kristy and her sister Nikki at a local doubles tournament. The teacher smiled at such winning ways.