Junior Andy Magee was a standout in youth tennis before dropping the sport to focus on football in high school.
The extensive voyage of Andy Magee has taken him from a top-five youth tennis player to a Division-I football recruit, from West Coast football to the Terrapins men’s tennis team.
The change, it seems, has never been easy. Tragedy and bad luck have spurred much of it, from a loss of a loved one that tabled his future in one sport to a scholarship issue that dimmed his future in another.
The setbacks have come in waves, but they’ve also led Magee back to the sport he truly loves, offering a better understanding of life, its misfortunes and just how he can change his own – and others’ – for the better.
“The story I tell about Andy Magee is that he’s a survivor,” said Dan Niemann, a father figure to Magee. “He’s worked so hard for everything that he’s gotten and there’s been disappointment along the ways, but he’s matured and he’s grown up.”
n HEAD START
Magee started playing tennis at the age of 2 and began competing in tournaments only a few years later, finding time for other sports as he grew older. Pickup basketball with neighborhood kids became a staple of his childhood, and soon enough he was also playing Pop Warner football and Little League baseball.
There were just never enough hours in the day for tennis, though.
“His tennis coach … told us to give him a half-an-hour lesson. Andy would want to go more and more,” Carol Magee, Andy’s mother, said. “I said, ‘Give him an hour lesson,’ and he said, ‘No, no, make him stop when he wants more lessons.'”
His father, Frank Magee, taught Andy his love of sports. The two would go out in the evenings and practice any number of sports. Some days, they would play each other in tennis. On others, they’d practice Magee’s jump shot on the basketball court.
“Anything [Andy] would do, he would get up way earlier than he had to and just practice and practice,” Carol Magee recalled. “He prepares and does everything necessary to win.”
While other children enjoyed sports for the simple fun of them, Magee relished the satisfaction winning brought him – and he won quite often. Never short on confidence, his self-assurance at such a young age rubbed some the wrong way.
“His very first doubles partner, when Andy was about 7, he went out there and Andy said, ‘You ready to win?’ and the other little boy said, ‘I don’t care,'” Carol Magee said. “Andy came over to me and said, ‘Mom, he doesn’t care if he wins or not. You have to get me another partner; I can’t play this kid who thinks it’s fun.'”
Bigger than most of his peers, Magee used his size advantage and confidence to become one of the best all-around athletes in the area. Coaches and friends described Magee as someone who, if given a little time and practice, could become good at just about any sport.
At one of Magee’s Little League games, Dennis Rizza said, the first players to hit a sign positioned on the center-field fence would win $50 to $100. As Magee stepped to the plate, a group of players and parents started heckling him. Magee, borrowing a page from Babe Ruth’s most hallowed lore, pointed to the fence and proceeded to hit the next pitch into the sign.
“That’s how good an athlete he was,” Rizza said.
n SHOOTING STAR
Still, tennis took precedence for Magee. Coached by his father and Rizza, he soon became one of the best prospects in the nation. He traveled to the Czech Republic to represent the U.S. in a junior tennis tournament and went to a training center in Carson, Calif., when Venus or Serena Williams needed a hitting or practice partner, his mother said.
“I was playing in tournaments every weekend,” Magee said. “It’s just like a routine.”
By that year, a number of coaches had already started asking his parents if they could take Magee and train him to be a professional tennis player.
The prospect of their youngest son going away on his own and not finishing school, however, was not what Magee’s parents had in mind. Carol Magee wanted Andy to go to college, and she never became comfortable with the idea of her son being away from home so soon.
“Andy really wanted to go,” she said. “But I didn’t feel comfortable with my 10-year-old being away from home.”
So, to the dismay of many of his tennis rivals, he stayed. In 2005, when he was ranked as high as No. 5 in the nation by the U.S. Tennis Association, Magee reached the pinnacle of his success, participating in the quarterfinals of the 2005 USTA Nationals in Kalamazoo, Mich.
n CHANGE IN PLANS
That year also offered one of the most devastating lows of his young life. Magee was just 14 when, after a battle with lung cancer, Frank Magee died March 28, 2005. Andy Magee never outwardly mourned his father’s death, but he slowly turned his attention away from tennis and to football, a sport his father loved and played in high school.
“It was really tough,” Magee said. “He was my coach and traveling coach. That was pretty much my only reason I stopped playing, so it had a direct effect on my tennis career.
“I was top five in the country till the age of 11, so who knows where I’d be now? I don’t know if I’d be in college, but I’d be somewhere.”
His football fortunes weren’t exactly bare, though. At Chadwick School, a small private prep school in Palos Verde Peninsula, Calif., Magee switched from defense to offense in his junior year after his coach saw him throwing the ball well in warm-ups. Even though his high school was not well-known for its football program, Magee, along with the school, garnered attention from college coaches with his standout play.
Regarded as one of the best quarterbacks in the state, Magee accepted a scholarship offer to play at Arizona State. He received little playing time with the Sun Devils, however, and after what Magee termed a financial mix-up, he was encouraged to look for schools he could transfer to.
He settled on UCLA the following year, and he walked on to the football team as a fullback. It wasn’t his natural position, but he wanted any chance to get on the field. That proved problematic when Bruins coaches decided they were going to switch to a spread offense that did not utilize a fullback. Magee, once again, looked for another place to call home.
n BACK TO BASICS
After calling his old tennis coach, Rizza, for advice, Magee worked out with him to get back into tennis shape. Magee looked at a number of schools, but a few were cautious about offering him a scholarship. After all, he hadn’t played tennis competitively in five years.
So Rizza called Kyle Spencer, the Terps men’s tennis team’s coach, and told him he had a player with upside whom he should take a look at. Spencer agreed, saw Magee hit a few balls in a practice session and was sold.
“I’m a firm believer [that] once you have some skill, it doesn’t leave, you just have to bring it out,” Rizza said. “I knew he could play a fairly high level of tennis, especially doubles. He’s a great competitor.”
Before deciding, Magee talked about his transition back to tennis with his mother, who, after meeting Spencer and hearing his pitch, was convinced it was the right move. Soon, she became the biggest advocate for Magee to come to College Park.
“I told him to do what he wanted, but I told him my vote was for Maryland,” Magee said. “I loved Maryland, and I was impressed with the coaches and what they talked about.”
Transitioning into the community for the 2010-11 season wasn’t hard for Magee: When he was younger, he played tournaments on the East Coast, he said.
This season, the English major has been a huge reason for the team’s success in doubles. He’s won 11 of his 16 matches this season, and he’s currently 8-9 in singles.
“It’s way different when you’re coming back and you haven’t been in these situations in four or five years,” Magee said. “I think that’s the toughest part about the tennis. There’s been no tough part about coming here.”
In the No. 58 Terps’ March 4 match against No. 26 Notre Dame, he and doubles partner Jesse Kiuru beat the Fighting Irish’s third-ranked pair, 9-8, in a 7-4 tiebreaker. Magee was the only member of the team to win his singles match, pulling out a tough three-set win on the sixth-ranked court.
Looking ahead, Magee said he’d like to go into strength training or coaching after college. Interested in all sports and full of energy, Magee believes he would be well-suited for a career in coaching. Those closest to him said they don’t disagree.
“He’s just amazing,” Carol Magee said. “He is a smart, caring, passionate and determined individual. He does things regardless of what others say or will think of him, and does it well.”
walker@umdbk.com
