By Jake Terry
LSU Sports Information
Five years ago the LSU men’s tennis team held its annual tryouts for people who wanted to walk on to the team. The coaching staff marched out Ken Skupski, the team’s top player, to compete against the walk on candidates.
One of the candidates was a freshman from New Orleans named Kevin Dessauer.
“In his walk on tryout, Kevin was able to get four games off Skupski in a set, so we knew he had potential,” head coach Jeff Brown said.
Dessauer joined the team and started an unlikely tennis career, especially since tennis was not the main sport Dessauer played growing up.
As a kid Dessauer loved several sports, but the sport he loved the most was basketball. He played all the time, and as he got older he experienced much success.
Dessauer averaged nearly 20 points per game his senior year at Archbishop Rummel High School and earned all-district honors twice during his basketball career.
“Basketball was my favorite sport growing up, but I only grew to be 6-0. So that didn’t work out well for me,” Dessauer joked.
Despite basketball being his favorite sport, Dessauer also lettered in tennis, baseball and golf at Rummel and reached the state finals in tennis his senior season.
Because Dessauer focused on basketball while growing up, he did not play much tennis, but when he did, it was his father and his older brother who taught him how to play.
However, Dessauer did not want to focus on tennis because it was more of an individual sport in high school, not a team sport like basketball, and Dessauer was always more of a team-oriented person.
But when Dessauer decided to attend LSU, the school he loved as a child, he chose to play tennis.
“I would not have been able to play basketball for LSU,” Dessauer said. “The reason I chose tennis in college was because it is a team sport. If it wasn’t a team sport, then I probably wouldn’t have played it.”
Some people wondered why Dessauer chose LSU when he had offers from other schools to play basketball and tennis, but for Dessauer the answer was simple.
“I figured why go to a smaller school when you can go to a high-profile school like LSU,” Dessauer said. “I thought from the beginning maybe I could work hard enough and earn a scholarship.”
And he did earn a scholarship ? sort of.
From the moment Dessauer stepped onto LSU’s campus, he knew he wanted to be in physical therapy and he wanted to go to graduate school. He also knew to get into graduate school a student had to possess a high grade point average, so he took school seriously and treated himself as a student first and as an athlete second.
“Once I started doing well, I realized that I could accomplish the goals that I set,” Dessauer said. “Once you get one year behind your belt, you realize how to study and manage time. It gets easier as it goes.”
He has now been in college for five years because he redshirted his freshman year with tennis, and through these five years Dessauer has maintained a flawless 4.0 grade point average in kinesiology.
For his efforts Dessauer has received many academic awards. He has been named a three-time Intercollegiate Tennis Association Scholar-Athlete, 2007 First-Team ESPN the Magazine Academic All-American, 2007 Southeastern Conference Scholar-Athlete of the Year, and most recently he was the recipient of the LSU Male Scholar-Athlete of the Year Award.
Because of his outstanding work in the classroom, Dessauer was awarded a board of supervisors scholarship that pays for his tuition, and like a true team player, he is not upset that he has not been offered an athletic scholarship.
“Now we’re able to bring in more guys,” Dessauer said. “We didn’t have to waste a scholarship on me because we only have four and a half scholarships for the team. Everybody can get a piece of it, and none of it has to go to me.”
Dessauer has done more than succeed in the classroom, however. He has tremendously improved his tennis game.
During his redshirt freshman and sophomore seasons, Dessauer saw limited action on the courts, and after two years his singles record stood at 19-15.
“I think I was just behind experience-wise. I had the ability. I just wasn’t in the match situations. There is an old clich? ? you have to lose some before you can win ? and I definitely did that because I lost early on,” Dessauer said.
Despite the early losses in his career, Dessauer, in true form, kept working and kept competing in practice to improve, and Brown recognized the desire Dessauer displayed on the court.
“He probably has come further than any player that I’ve ever had from the fact that he hadn’t competitively played in six years before he came to college,” Brown said. “He practiced with former teammate, Cory Ross, and they would go out and hit ground strokes all day.”
Not only did the walk on improve his game, but he also earned a consistent spot in the singles lineup last season as a junior. In fact, Dessauer proved to be one of the key reasons why the team finished 18-7, ranked 15th in the nation and advanced all the way to the NCAA Round of 16.
Dessauer also finished the season ranked No. 92 in the country. He had gone from a walk on athlete just looking to help the team to one of the top 100 collegiate tennis players in the entire nation. This season, Dessauer has continued his phenomenal play as he has gone undefeated in dual matches so far with a perfect, team-leading 10-0 record.
“Kevin just goes out and if he wins, he wins, and if he doesn’t, he isn’t into who he was supposed to beat and who he wasn’t supposed to beat,” Brown said. “He just goes out and competes and has gotten to the level that he is at now, which is why last year at certain times he was definitely one of the top 100 players in the nation.”
Because of all the hard work, determination, grit and success Dessauer has shown throughout his time as a Tiger, Brown named Dessauer the 2007-08 team captain, a title that Dessauer humbly accepted.
“There are five freshmen on the team, so there is a lot of leading to be done,” Dessauer said. “I stress to them that tennis is important, but you have to be able to go out there and get it done in the classroom. You have to make visits to schools in the community. It’s not a one-dimensional thing, and that’s something that everyone on this team has learned.”
Dessauer has shown great leadership this year as the Tigers are off to another good season, but there is much more to Dessauer than tennis and academics. There is a softer side.
On a chilly Baton Rouge night two weeks ago, Dessauer and his girlfriend of six years, Michelle Reynolds, attended an annual modeling photo shoot. That night there were three models for the shoot at the Shaw Center downtown ? Dessauer, Reynolds and another woman.
Dessauer approached the photographer and asked him if the photographer would excuse the other model for a brief time so that Dessauer and Reynolds would be alone. The photographer obliged.
When the two were alone with the photographer at the top of the Shaw Center with the bright lights of the city glowing in the background, Dessauer dropped to one knee, pulled out the ring and popped the question.
Reynolds said yes, and as all of this was taking place the photographer was capturing the moment so the couple can look back on this special night.
But the surprise was not over. Dessauer had made one other arrangement.
“My family and her family surprised her and met us at Tsunami after the photo shoot, so it was a great day overall,” Dessauer said.
For Dessauer there have many great events in his life, such as becoming the senior captain of the LSU tennis team, earning and maintaining a perfect 4.0 gpa throughout college and becoming engaged to his sweetheart.
But for the hardworking, humble Dessauer, there is certain to be many more great events because everywhere he goes and in everything he does, success follows.