SHAKER HEIGHTS, Ohio – Days after winning her tennis state title, Hathaway Brown singles player Ariana Iranpour was ready to get back to hitting for hours.
There were times the Division II state singles champion, who has been selected as the cleveland.com Girls Tennis Player of the Year, actually did spend 12 hours per day training. She toned it down recently to a more manageable four to six hours.
After winning state earlier this month, Iranpour’s private coach told her she deserved a break. He told her he’d call all the local clubs and ban her for the day.
“I still showed up,” Iranpour said. “But just to say hi.”
This from the girl who started playing the sport most children pick up as youngsters when she was 11, and who claims she is the most “unathletic person in the family.”
While her grandmother was once the No. 1 basketball player in Turkey and her grandfather played on the country’s national volleyball team, Ariana Iranpour had to be taught how to run.
“Nope, I did not inherit those genes at all,” Iranpour said with a smile.
Her trainer laughed the first time he saw the Hathaway Brown athlete run to some cones.
“I was really off-balance too,” Iranpour said. “You could push me over. I looked like a two-year old trying to walk.
“(Tennis) didn’t come naturally to me at all.”
Iranpour justified her early struggles with the fact that when she was younger, she never played sports. None.
Instead, she spent her weekends at the science museum getting Dippin' Dots with her dad.
“Seriously,” she said. “Every weekend.”
When it wasn’t science, it was food.
“I love to eat,” she said.
Her Iranian culture puts a strong focus on family and food. By the time she was 6, Iranpour loved spending time cooking. By the time she was 9, she made pomegranate glazed cornish hen with saffron risotto.
“Now my tastes have changed,” Iranpour said. “I try everything – lamb’s heart, jellyfish, tripe.”
There is no culinary school in her future. She wants to become a plastic surgeon. Of course, she wants to play tennis along the way. Iranpour is being recruited but wouldn’t disclose by which schools.
Wherever she ends up, her new teammates may be surprised to find her pre-match routine to get pumped.
Iranpour loves rap, especially Eminem. She owns all his CDs and before her national tournaments, she used to put her headphones on and pull the hood of a sweatshirt up and rap to herself in a mirror like the rapper himself did in the movie "Eight Mile."
“Then at sectionals my freshman year an old woman caught me rapping to myself and I got really embarrassed,” she said.
However, his latest song, “Rap God” is what Iranpour said helped her win state.
“Now I have to rap in private,” Iranpour said.
For now, Iranpour wonders about the day after college when she’ll have a job and how she will still manage to still fit in 12 hours of tennis.
“I’ll have to figure it out,” Iranpour said, “ but really I’m just living up the time I have now.”
HONORABLE MENTION
Danielle Buchinsky, Laurel; Emily Dunbar, Cloverleaf; Alissa Nakamoto, Orange; Molly Sandburg, Walsh Jesuit; Adrian Young, Orange.
Contact high school sports reporter Stephanie Kuzydym by email (skuzydym@cleveland.com) or on Twitter (@stephkuzy). Or log in and leave a message in the comments section below.
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