Senior Yawna Allen has made a big impact for OSU since transferring from Arkansas. Allen’s grandfather taught her to play tennis.
To say that tennis runs in Yawna Allen’s family would be a vast understatement.
Allen, a senior on the Cowgirl tennis team, has known tennis her whole life thanks to her grandfather, Noah Allen, who coached tennis at Pacific University, and her mother and four aunts, all of whom played tennis.
The Allen family was once named the Southwest Tennis Family of the Year by the International Tennis Association.
“I just remember going when I was three years old and starting to play, I just loved [tennis],” Allen said. “I bugged my mom until she stayed out there and showed me how to play a little bit.
“I don’t feel any pressure to be good at sports. I just enjoy it because I’ve been around it so much.”
Although she loved tennis at three, Allen did not start playing seriously until her grandfather started coaching her at age 10.
Noah co-founded the North American Indian Tennis Association and is the chair of the American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame.
“I took Yawna on as a prospect with no intentions of doing anything except teaching her how to play tennis reasonably well as a recreation,” Noah said. “But, she got better and better and better and ended up ranked No. 1 in the high schools in Arizona.
“We would get up at six o’clock in the morning and play for two hours, and then around five or six, we’d go back out for another two hours.”
Allen’s mother, Casaja Allen Quals, won the state title in Arizona two years in a row before attending Haskell Junior College and playing the No. 1 spot on the men’s tennis team. She made nationals for the all-American Indian school.
Quals noticed her daughter’s determination at a young age.
“Yawna was always very competitive,” Casaja Allen Quals said. “She has such an inner drive to do what needs to be done because she loves the sport.”
Allen’s road to Oklahoma State was far from smooth despite her family’s experience in the sport.
She tore her an ACL in her left knee when she was 14 and her right ACL when she was 18. Both times she had surgery to repair the torn ligaments.
Although many athletes never recover from ACL injuries, Allen persevered and went through extensive rehab to get back in tennis form.
“Rehabbing from those ACL surgeries was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done,” Allen said. “Still, if it happened again, I’d go through rehab again because that’s just how much I love the game.”
Allen played tennis for the University of Arkansas as a freshman before transferring to Oklahoma State for her sophomore season.
She made an immediate impact as a Cowgirl by earning Big 12 Player of the Week honors on March 14, 2006.
As a senior, Allen has primarily been a No. 2 singles player and No. 1 doubles player with fellow senior Iryna Tkachenko.
Allen plans on playing professionally after graduating in May.
Her first professional match will be in Nicaragua.
Yawna, which means “bear” in Cherokee, is enrolled as a Quapaw but is also part Cherokee and Euchee.
“Yawna is determined to make something of herself for the benefit of all people, but particularly people of minority birth,” said Carol Green, Allen’s aunt and board member of the American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame.
“I think she’s really interested in making it known that anybody can do it no matter what color they are.”
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