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Long before picking her major, Meghna Anand picked her sport.

The teenaged Truro tennis phenom has chosen the University of Montana and will play in division one (the highest level) next year.

“I’m excited,” the 17-year-old said in a recent interview.

While she knows she’ll be playing tennis on nearly a full-ride scholarship, she hasn’t figured out yet just what she’ll be studying. Athletes tend to sign to a university team before enrolling in a program.

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“I don’t know yet, actually. I was thinking of taking pharmacy but if I take pharmacy, I won’t have time to play tennis,” she said, adding she might take a bachelor of science instead and then pursue pharmacy later.

“If science is too much, then I’m thinking either of doing law school or medical school.”

MAKING THE PICK

“I didn’t really know what school I wanted to go to,” said Anand, who plays both singles and doubles tennis.

She said she sent out a lot of emails to university coaches in the fall and the one from the coach at the University of Montana caught her attention. After several conversations with their coaching staff, she signed with the university shortly before Christmas.

“There were a few other schools but they didn’t offer really good scholarships and other schools, their teams were already full. I actually started really late doing this process,” she said, adding that she should have started figuring this out in Grade 11 but she was focused on her International Baccalaureate (IB) courses in high school.

Her tuition is covered next year, but she’ll have to pay for housing and a meal plan.

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PREPARING FOR DIVISION ONE

Anand, who has been playing tennis since she could walk, is expecting some tough competition next year.

“The competition is going to be really high but I’ve been looking for opportunities like this because Nova Scotia is a really small place for tennis,” she said. “We go to nationals but we don’t have anyone to play with here.”

Her parents moved here from India about 20 years ago and soon after, her father started playing tennis. He introduced the sport to his daughter.

“My dad would take me to tennis tournaments and I would sit in the stroller and then when I was walking, after his matches, I would go up to him and take his rackets,” she said.

She was 10 years old when she first qualified for nationals on the U12 team.

Last year, she won a Triple Crown at the Gallagher Nova Scotia Open in Halifax, where she won the women’s singles open, the mixed doubles open, and the women’s doubles open.

GOALS

Over her university career, Anand said she’s aiming to boost her ranking, make it into the Big Sky Conference (the grouping of schools which includes Montana) and even  to the NCAA championships — “qualifiers and maybe even main draw.”

Her Universal Tennis Rating (UTR), a global rating system for tennis players, is 8.13, which fits in with the other members of the women’s team at the University of Montana, Anand said.

Many university players in Canada have around a six UTR rating, she added.

“For girls, (a rating of) 10-12 is really high, nearly go pro,” she said.

And while her conference is just below that level, if her team makes it to the NCAA championships, she said she’ll have the chance to take on some of these high-level competitors.

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