Smashing Expectations

By the time she’d finished juniors, Emma Kamper ranked among the top five tennis players in her native Denmark and the top 500 globally. Now she’s serving up wins on U.S. college courts. Utah Tennis discovered Kamper after receiving a YouTube highlight reel that she had sent to several coaches. “I came to campus for a visit, and everything just felt right,” she says. Now in her third year at Utah, Kamper has hit her stride. This past fall, she entered the International Tennis Association Mountain Regional Championships as the No. 1 seed and won her first five matches—a performance that punched her ticket to the NCAA Individual Championships. She credits her success to her mental game. “I just feel like I have this calmness inside,” she says. “I know what I’m capable of.”