Serbian Cowgirl

When building a program capable of achieving at a high level, difference makers are not a suggestion but a requirement. Oklahoma State tennis was not an exception to the rule and Cowgirl head coach Chris Young knew exactly what was needed in his efforts to elevate his program.

"I was looking for kids out there who were close to being pros, but were not quite achieving the results they wanted and I was looking for kids that maybe had the talent and needed the resources or things we could provide," Young said.

Seeking players to help continue the transformation OSU tennis and establish its culture, Young came across a name, which piqued his interest … Katarina Adamovic.

"I heard her name when I was in communication with some schools whose coaches were talking about recruiting her, so I started reaching out to her a little more aggressively and talking to her," Young said.

Adamovic fit the description of Young's recruiting target: a talented player with her sights set on playing professionally, but lacking the means necessary to do so.

"Coming to college wasn't my first decision at all. I had this goal and dream to play professionally, travel and play tournaments," Adamovic admitted. "Where I come from, for tennis, you need this huge financial support to do it and you need coaches and everything. So, college was the best option at that time and I was against it, but my parents pushed me and I am grateful that they did."

With several big-name schools in pursuit of her talents, Young found himself planted firmly behind the 8-ball in his efforts to lure Adamovic to Stillwater. With his competition seemingly having built-in advantages, Young remained undeterred and scheduled a trip across the Atlantic Ocean to see Adamovic in her home country of Serbia.

"I knew the only way I was going to be able to get her was to go over there and spend time with her. I found a tournament that was in Serbia, set it up to go over and spend time watching her play and visit with her and her dad following the tournament," Young said.

The decision to book the flight to Europe was made and Young suddenly emerged as the frontrunner in the recruiting race. With his foot in the door and Adamovic on the cusp of becoming a Cowgirl, Young moved to the forefront by taking a different approach in building the relationship between the two.

"I think most people were recruiting her based on location and other factors and she and I started talking about tennis quite a bit," Young said.

Ultimately, a connection was made between the two that would shape the future for both.

"I had a lot of offers and there was a lot of pressure on me to decide where to go. So I had the list of colleges, kind of put together a top three and I really wanted to go to UCLA. If I was going to college, I was going to UCLA. That was like my dream school," Adamovic said.

However, that dream would undergo a plot twist with Young's visit providing the potential for an alternate ending. Adamovic bought into Young's vision for the OSU program, took a leap of faith and opted for the cozy confines of Stillwater over the bright lights of Los Angeles — sight unseen no less.

"I had UCLA and then Chris came into the story. He came all the way to Serbia to meet me. I talked to him and explained my goals and my dreams to him. I didn't care about facilities or anything like that. I just cared about what he was going to give me as a person and as a player," Adamovic said.

"What he told me was exactly what I wanted to hear."

And with that, the impact player coaches desire to build a program or maintain its success altered course and decided to spend her next four years in Stillwater without having ever set foot in Oklahoma.

While successful in clearing multiple hurdles to add Adamovic to the OSU roster, Young's work was far from done. While his talented freshman was now wearing the orange and black, she would have to learn the finer points of playing tennis in a team setting.

"The hardest thing for our sport is all of these kids play on their own, individually, for themselves their entire life and then they come here and college tennis is a team sport. It is the only time that most of them play on a team," Young explained.

To add to the degree of difficulty, Adamovic did not arrive on campus until the spring semester, leaving even less time to adjust to life halfway around the globe, much less acclimate to the team concept.

"I came in January and that made it harder. After a week we left to go to Hawaii and I had to play my first college match and I didn't know what to do or how to do it or about the team. It was like a shock," Adamovic said.

Competing at the Nos. 4 and 5 spots in the lineup, success was not immediate, with Adamovic compiling a 10-11 mark during that first season. However, important lessons were learned during that season. In fact, a loss in her Cowgirl debut provided Young the first building block in the transformation of individual into teammate.

"I went off by myself and I started crying and Coach came and asked what I was doing and told me I had these teammates to cheer for because they are still playing. I was like, 'Why would I go do that?," Adamovic said.

While incorporating Adamovic into the team setting, Young would also take on the task of helping his potential-filled, yet raw talent refine her skills and properly channel her work ethic.

"When I went to Serbia and watched her practice and warm up for her tournament I thought she had all of the athletic ability and talent in the world, but the way she was going about it was all wrong. She was working hard, but didn't have the proper discipline. I thought she had all the right tools and if she bought into what we are doing she could be pretty special," Young said.

Much like her fellow Serbian athletes, Adamovic is filled with the fiery passion that has been the trademark to their successes. However, it was those same traits that held her back initially in her collegiate career.

"One of the things that makes her great are her emotions, but she didn't know how to control that for the first couple of years she was here. She was a girl that had a lot of big dreams and goals and didn't really know what she was doing. Mentally, she would get so wound up for matches she couldn't stay under control and a lot of times her freshman year I had to pull her out of singles after doubles because her mindset wasn't right," Young said.

Nevertheless, Young maintained high expectations, potentially at the immediate expense for the team, while keeping the big picture in focus. With his guidance and her relentless work effort, everything began to fall into place for Adamovic during her sophomore campaign.

That season, Adamovic competed at the Nos. 2 and 3 slots, compiling a 21-11 mark for the Cowgirls and earning all-conference honors along the way.

"Over the past couple of years, she has really trusted me and our system and what we are doing. She has put in the work herself, so it has been a combination of a lot of things and ultimately it has been her and her hard work that has done it," Young said.

Not only was Adamovic beginning to realize her potential on the court, but also understanding the importance of being a good teammate — a role she now embraces and thrives in while playing for something bigger than herself.

"As time has gone by, I have realized it is not about me anymore. You have to be united and you have to support one another through the bad and good. You are going to have issues, but you have to solve them because we are in this together and if we want to do these things we have to stay together and play for one another," she said.

"That is what makes a team."

As a matter of fact, it is the team setting that has provided Adamovic with her most cherished memory on the tennis court. As the Cowgirls made their historic run a year ago to the NCAA Championship match, the team's catalyst took down one ranked opponent after another, all while capturing the admiration of the OSU faithful and watching the throng of supporters grow with each victory.

"The fact that all of those people came is the best memory I have ever had on the court and probably will be. That is going to stay with me for the rest of my life. That was my first time to play in front of that many people. To have that moment and play in front of thousands of people in Tulsa cheering for us, people who maybe had never been to a tennis match, was insane. I never thought I would experience anything like that," she said.

Adamovic's run in the team competition began with a straight-set victory over the No. 100-ranked player in the country and continued with victories over Nos. 86, 5, 7 before concluding against Stanford's 25th-ranked Carol Zhao in the title match, earning the tournament's Most Outstanding Player award in the process.

While the Cowgirls narrowly missed winning the program's first national championship with a heartbreaking loss to the Cardinal in the finale, Adamovic showed just how much she has bought into the program Young has constructed. With the sting of the team's loss still lingering, 5-8 sparkplug gathered herself for the individual tournament to continue representing the school for which she has become so attached.

"We lost as a team, but Oklahoma State was still playing, maybe as an individual, but Oklahoma State was still playing. If I didn't have the name Oklahoma State next to mine, I might not have been able to do it, but I knew the community was looking at me and I just stayed focused on the things I needed to do, who I am doing it for and I am doing it for something bigger than me. That is what drove me," Adamovic said.

That drive produced a win over No. 20 Sydney Campbell of Vanderbilt and a second win over No. 5 Ellen Perez of Georgia preceded a victory over Florida's Belinda Woodcock to secure All-America status. Eventually, she saw her season come to an end in the quarterfinal round where fell in three sets against top-ranked Hayley Carter of North Carolina.

Despite coming up just short of her goal of bringing home a national championship, Adamovic's run did not go unnoticed and was admired by many in the tennis community.

"I think she could've beaten anybody in the country. She was beating high-level girls and a lot of coaches have told me that was one of the more impressive runs they have seen a college tennis player have. For about 10 days, she was as good as there was in the country," Young said.

During the Cowgirls' memorable showing, it became apparent Adamovic thrived on the grand stage, seizing the moment reserved for those who excel when the stakes are highest.

"She gets the crowd engaged and she enjoys playing in front of people and interacts with our fans. I think that is the one thing that has endeared her to our fans and has engaged our fans more into our team is that our kids engage with the fans," Young said.

Adamovic exhibited that engaging personality and abundance of energy so popular among Cowgirl fans at an early age, prompting her family to seek a proper outlet. Initially, gymnastics was given a try and did not provide the answer, but a television set did.

"I was really tiny and full of energy. My parents wanted me to play a sport. At first, they signed me up for gymnastics, but there wasn't enough activity there and I was bored. It was by accident I saw a commercial for tennis and we signed up and I started," Adamovic said.

At age 6, the future Cowgirl took up the sport that would open the door to her future, albeit under less than ideal circumstances. Within days of the conclusion of the Kosovo War, Adamovic found her way to the tennis court for the first time surrounded by the aftermath in her ravaged homeland.

"It is crazy to know that every day, a bomb dropped a mile from my house, I was a kid and didn't really know what was actually happening, but I knew my parents were scared and other people were scared," Adamovic recalled.

"I remember one moment when I was going for a walk with my mom and the siren came on and we were in the middle of the street and she took me in her arms and ran home. People would run and scream when the siren would come on. It is a small area where I am from and the next city is six or seven miles away and they destroyed that city, bombing it every day."

While the conflict created unthinkable devastation in Serbia, it has also forged a mindset of grit and toughness to fight until the very end among its athletes. Watch Adamovic compete and you see the same heart and a never-give-up attitude displayed by fellow Serbian and world-class tennis star Novak Djokovic en route to his 12 Grand Slam titles.

"I had to fight for everything all of my life. Nothing was really given to me and it made me strive for more and to be this person who is grateful for every opportunity I got. The whole process of growing up in that environment and those conditions made you appreciate it and give everything you have on every point and every match and every ball," Adamovic said.

When Adamovic arrived in Stillwater, she had never so much as a coach, much less the resources Oklahoma State had to offer. Her hometown of Cacak did not have courts of any kind, requiring a 45-minute drive to practice and play.

"Since I was 12, I have never had a tennis coach, so everything I was doing I was doing by myself. Our country had been through a tough period and we had a lack of finances. That was the last thing you would put money toward was sports. When you have to be able to buy food for your kids you wouldn't go and pay for tennis lessons," Adamovic said.

With the road map for success provided by Young and the luxury of the Michael and Anne Greenwood Tennis Center at her fingertips, Adamovic thrived and has proved to be a textbook win-win situation.

"Coming here and having everything in front of me is just amazing opportunity for me as a person and as a player. You have to be appreciative that somebody is giving you this opportunity so you can make your dreams come true. I could not be more grateful that I chose to come here and have these people around and these facilities and everything," Adamovic said.

While she has provided countless thrills for the OSU faithful on the court, it is Adamovic who voices her deep appreciation for her university and what it has given her.

"You see these people who are coming to the matches to see you and support you. The athletic department who gives you a scholarship and all of these opportunities," Adamovic said.

"We all embrace being a Cowgirl and Oklahoma State. I consider Stillwater as my first home, not Serbia, and it because of the people and Oklahoma State University and what this community has given me."

Spoken like a true team player.

Oklahoma State University Athletics

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