North Jersey Female Athlete of the Week does what she needs to do to win
In some way, Jaime Carlin is a bundle of contradictions.
She picked tennis as her primary sport because she wanted the pressure of winning or losing to be solely on her shoulders. But Holy Angels tennis coach Meagan Williams calls her a phenomenal team leader who encourages her teammates at every turn.
Carlin calls herself a very structured person who plans her daily routine almost to the minute, yet isn’t afraid to change her plan on the court instantly if it isn’t working.
After being shut out by eventual Bergen County individual champ Britney Lee of Ridgefield Park in the opening set of her recent match, Carlin changed it up and began hitting “moon balls,” leading to points that went as long as 37 strokes and kept Lee on the court for nearly an hour-and-a-half before losing a tough match.
“I was going to embarrass myself if I didn’t change something,” she said. “If you’re losing, you can’t just keep doing the same things.”
Carlin said she’s most comfortable on the hardcourts that make up the bulk of play in the Northeast but thinks she plays better on clay courts. She said she loves to play tournaments in the South whenever she can but wants and expects to play collegiately in the Northeast.
A bundle of contradictions or someone who adjusts to change well?
The rest of her young life seems to suggest the latter.
Carlin picked up a racket for the first time at about 2 years old and she thinks her mom, who was a high school tennis player herself, has pictures of her swinging a racket clearly too big for her. And she said she “fiddled around with other sports as a youngster,” it wasn’t long before she decided tennis was for her.
“I fell in love with the sport because it was more exciting than golf and I realized quickly that even if you’re having a bad day in tennis, you can still figure out ways to win,” said Carlin, who has recorded a 50-8 records in three years as the Angels’ No. 1 player. “I started playing tournaments (in the Eastern section of the U.S. Tennis Association) at about 7, but it wasn’t until the COVID year that I really started playing a lot because I really missed it.”
So she followed private coach Petar Kaneb from Tenafly to his new position in Westchester and started playing more often. Her family moved from Tenafly to Norwood at about the same time and Carlin went to middle school at Holy Angels before enrolling in the high school in Fall 2023.
“Because I played in a lot of tennis tournaments, I needed some Fridays and Mondays off to travel and public schools don’t like that,” Carlin said. “So I went to Holy Angels.”
She was an immediate high school sensation, winning the first singles title in the 2023 Bergen County team tournament and taking second to Sylvie Yao of Dwight-Englewood last fall before defeating Jazmin Navidad of Bergenfield last week.
Standout high school tennis players sometimes skip high school matches to play tournaments with ranking points and often only play for their high school in major events.
That’s not the case for Carlin, who only missed one match this year (she was sick) and doesn’t plan on missing any others despite a solid New Jersey and regional ranking in the USTA.
“I love my teammates and coach at Holy Angels,” said Carlin, who admits she’s lost some ranking points by playing some high school matches in lieu of club tournaments. “I want to play in college and you make some sacrifices to help your team there. I figure by doing that now, it’ll be an easier transition.”
Carlin considers herself a student first, then a tennis player, and thinks she’d like to study biochemistry in college, maybe with an eye towards sports medicine.
But first there’s the rest of this season at Holy Angels and the NJSIAA team tournament, where the Angels are the No. 2 seed in the Non Public section (and maybe the No. 3 team in the state) at the same time she’s seeded in the 5-8 pool and projected to at least equal her 2024 quarterfinal performance.
And there’s the matter of those superstitions, which by many standards are tame ones.
“I have a million pair of the same tennis socks and they’re the only ones I like to wear on the court,” she said with a laugh. She also wears a hat on the court, sunny or cloudy, indoors or outdoors, day or night. Which one?
“It doesn’t matter as long as it’s a hat,” she said. “I have lots of them.”
There may be contradictions in some things Carlin does but the flexibility she shows makes her better for it.
Jaime Carlin
Sport: Tennis
School: Holy Angels
Class: Junior. Age: 16
Accomplishment: Carlin won her second first singles title in three years at the Bergen County tennis team tournament leading the Angels to their second straight title.
Also nominated: Daniella Cameron of Leonia for cross-country.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Bergen Record Female Athlete of the Week: Jaime Carlin, Holy Angels
