Feb. 21 was a confusing night for Allie and Kadie Hueffner of the Oregon women’s tennis team. After two games in southern California against UC Santa Barbara and Santa Clara University, the girls sat in the PDX airport waiting for their flight back home to Eugene. The weekend went well for Kadie, but Allie had one of the roughest games of her life against UCSB. The fans were more hostile than usual and had chosen Allie as their verbal target.
Both girls had been getting “weird vibes” all weekend from the team and coaching staff, although they were unable to pinpoint an exact reason why. They said the atmosphere was cold, despite everyone being close before their road trip. Although Allie and Kadie were the only two walk-ons, they had never before felt detached from the team. They frequently played in the lineup and loved their teammates.
Regardless, when Allie sat down in the airport with the coaches for her routine individual meeting about her game on Friday, Kadie knew something was wrong.
“I had a twin-instinct,” Kadie said. “I just knew. The whole time I knew in my heart. I was waiting, sitting there on my phone thinking this is not going to go well. I knew before she even had her meeting. All it took was Allie to stand up (afterward) and look at me with tears in her eyes and I knew she was done.”
Allie said that the meeting quickly turned from being routine to strange, and that she was being asked to “take a step back” and reevaluate her decision to be on the team and if it was the right fit for her. She felt trapped and forced to answer. She said, “Okay, I quit.”
Then Kadie quit to be with her sister.
The Athletic Program’s comment: “Effective Saturday, Feb. 21, Allie and Kadie Hueffner have left the program,” said head coach Alison Silverio. “We would like to thank Allie and Kadie for all that they’ve done for the women’s tennis program the past year and a half and wish them the best in their future endeavors.”
Both girls aren’t completely sure what happened last Saturday. Everything happened suddenly and unexpectedly. However, they both were quick to look on the bright side of the situation: Since they are both paying for their own education, they can now focus on school. Also, since they were never scholarship athletes, they had built a life for themselves outside of the sport to fall back on.
“Tennis for me was never going to go past college,” Kadie said. “Now I’m a student and that’s it, as opposed to a student who was playing tennis every day.”
Both girls say they’ll continue to play for fun, but there are still things they’ll miss — the biggest thing being their teammates.
“I had a boy on the men’s team ask me two weeks ago, ‘Do you like all of the girls?’” Allie said. “I looked at him and smiled and was like, ‘Yeah, I can honestly say that I like every single one of my teammates.’ I had fun being with them this year. I got along with every single one of them individually all in a different way.”
“I just hope that they know that we cared a lot about them,” she continued. “We put in so much work together and achieved so many goals and I don’t want that to be forgotten just because Kadie and I decided to end the journey where it is…Leaving them with five (players), that was never, ever what we wanted.”
Follow Anne Yilmaz on Twitter @anneyilmaz
[Originally published here by the Emerald on February 27, 2015]