(Extremely deep WWE announcer voice) Eileen Hillis…D3AS…Greg Janssen/Matt Von Vogt…and now…please welcome…our newest DraftKings champion…Jooooooooaaaaaaaaanne Marrrrrrsssshallllllllll (cue the John Cena music)!!! Joanne was the owner and mastermind behind “Winging It” which led our competition from wire to wire, and scored a tournament record 68 total points last weekend! Her team of Jonathan Jemison, Antonio Mora, Yassine Derbani, Joshua Xu, Nicholas Aney and Alejandro Rodriguez beat the next best teams (MINE along with AVZ and BMac) by a full seven points. Now it’s time to pay homage to our champion and get to know a little bit more about this year’s winner…
D3NE:First thing’s first, congratulations! Now…who are you and what is your connection to DIII tennis??
Joanne Marshall: Here’s the scoop. I’m a tennis mom. My connection to D3 tennis is that my daughter, Valerie Marshall, plays for Washington & Lee. I played college tennis many years ago at Georgetown, which was DII at the time. The divisions were all different back then since the NCAA didn’t run women’s sports.
NE: That’s amazing. You are our 2nd “tennis mom” to win DraftKings in our four years running the tournament, and both of you played college tennis as well! What was your favorite part of Georgetown tennis?
JM: Georgetown was a long time ago! My fondest memories are of the weekend road trips we took to tournaments and especially our two trips to Nationals.
NE: And how is Valerie liking W&L so far?
JM: She loves W&L. It is a very good academic and tennis fit for her.
NE: What did she say when you told her that you won DraftKings?
JM: “Congrats, I’m not surprised”.
NE: Haha you have a reputation then. Do you have any experience with fantasy sports?
JM: I have never played fantasy sports, but have played NCAA basketball pools. I love analyzing data and I love tennis. So I thought it would be fun to pick a team.
NE: Speaking of your team, you absolutely crushed it. How did you go about picking your winning team? Did you do a lot of research?
JM: I don’t follow men’s d3 tennis that closely, except for W&L, of course. That probably helped me because I didn’t have any pre-conceived ideas about any of the players. I definitely did some research. After getting an idea about the pricing, I decided to pick 1 high priced guy and look for strong players in the $4000-$6000 range. Ideally, I wanted to find the best #4, #5, #6 guys out there. I skimmed the list. I recognized Mora from juniors and Aney because of his sister Jessie. I also wanted a couple of guys from Chicago. I noticed that Xu had been as high as 35 on TRN and thought with that ranking, he would be undefeated at #6. Rodriquez also caught my eye as high on TRN and a low price. Finally, I decided I should pick another guy from Gustavus and settled on Derbani. For all of them, I checked out their past year on UTR to make sure they were in the lineup, had good results and to see if they played doubles. I knew the Aney family were all hockey players, so I hoped that athleticism would make him a good doubles player too.
NE: Outstanding! Did you have any troubles making your team? Were there any other players you were considering drafting?
JM: Ironically, the first player I selected for the team was Adrien Bouchet. He is from Northern Virginia and I know he is a star at Emory. But when I added up my final team, I was over by $125. I noticed Jemison was $125 less than Bouchet and I decided to swap them. I was happy with the other 5 guys I had selected and keeping Bouchet would have required too many changes. I considered Kozlowski and Stroup but decided I only wanted 1 guy who played 6, and that was Xu.
NE: That’s probably more in-depth than some of the other bloggers! What were your thoughts on the tournament as a whole?
JM: It was a great tournament! So many super close 5-4 matches, especially all the 3rd set tiebreakers in the CMU/Wash U match. Crazy! It looks like it will be an exciting, unpredictable season.
NE: We certainly hope so! What about W&L’s season? Will you get to watch any matches?
JM: I expect a good year from W&L. They lost a couple of key seniors, but they have a strong freshman class. I think the the team will get stronger as the year progresses. I attended about 6 matches last year and hope to watch a similar number this year, plus ITAs in the fall. I love watching the matches. Such a different atmosphere than junior tennis. College is much more fun to watch than juniors, but more nerve-wracking as there are 6 courts to worry about! It reminds me a lot of Zonals, which I always loved.
NE: Nothing beats college tennis! What brought you to The Blog in the first place?
JM: I originally found your blog when it was added to the TRN home page. I started looking at it more often once my daughter decided she wanted to play for a D3 college.
NE: Thanks for reading! Any comments or suggestions on things we do or something you’d like to see from us?
JM: I love the increased women’s coverage this year. You have done a great job with the season previews! Loved the Eudice podcast, too. I hope you continue to increase your content on the women’s side. I would like to see the Year End awards selected for women too. And a bracket challenge for the NCAA women’s tournament would be fun. I also wanted to thank you all for having a great site and running such a fun event
NE: We actually have more active women’s writers than any time in Blog history, and they’re putting out some really great content! Anything else you’d like the people to know?
JM: I have one additional comment. I think I was very lucky that Pomona beat Gustavus. If Gustavus had won, they would have played Emory on Saturday and Derbani and Aney would have had a much tougher day.
NE: Spoken like a true DraftKings player! I’d like to thank Joanne Marshall AKA Winging It for owning the competition this year and for taking the time to give us an interview. I want to be her when I grow up. Congrats again, Joanne!