FORTVILLE — Lydia Ruegsegger’s tennis lineage runs deep.
So much so that her family’s origin story on the courts, at times, overlaps and branches out from several directions.
Part of the Mt. Vernon senior’s humble beginnings stem from her father, David, who actively encouraged Ruegsegger and her two sisters at a young age to compete with fun, on-court activities, like “Smash You Dad,” to win some ice cream, if dad got plunked with the tennis ball.
Ruegsegger’s passion for tennis also goes back to her mother, Leslie, a former college competitor, who learned the game from her father and Lydia’s maternal grandfather, Moises.
As time went on, Lydia’s tennis drive was further honed with the help of Matthew Dziadosz, an instructor with the JCC Tennis program in Indianapolis where Ruegsegger met her JTT mentor and worked with him and his family before his passing on April 11 of last year.
There’s the tutelage Mt. Vernon head coach Gabe Muterspaugh instilled over the past four years, and her other immediate family members such as her mother’s sister, Lynette, who also played at the collegiate level.
Fittingly, her cousin and aunt’s daughter, Madelyn Keenan, a Dayton Christian prep standout in Ohio is moving on to play at Cederville University.
Before Lydia, there was elder sister, Hannah, who competed at Mt. Vernon through 2009 before heading to Marian University, and her sister Clara, the career-wins record holder at Mt. Vernon, who continued her career at Olivet Nazarene University until graduating five years ago.
“That competitiveness they’ve always instilled in us; my family is very competitive, it makes it so much fun to go out there and grind it and get better,” said Lydia Ruegsegger, the 2021 Girls Tennis Player of the Year. “I want to keep it going, too. Being able to teach my kids tennis one day would be awesome. I’d love to go and do that.”
This season, Ruegsegger was the Marauders’ rock, the team’s de facto professional, who led by example and unbeknownst to everyone, through injury.
Weeks after the conclusion of her final season at Mt. Vernon, Ruegsegger can be seen in a walking boot on her right leg. While not an ideal way to spend her summer, the incoming Grace College freshman is optimistic about the situation.
It could have been much worse.
“In February, I was playing a match on Junior Team tennis, and I landed on it wrong. I stepped on it, and it stopped, then it slid and I stopped again. And, I was like, ‘Oh, that hurt really bad.’ But, then as I kept playing, it kind of went away,” Ruegsegger explained. “I thought, I probably just strained it a little bit or something.”
The pain only subsided. It never truly went away, but after losing out on her 2020 season due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Ruegsegger managed through the discomfort.
“I told my mom about it, and I didn’t go into the doctor, and I almost didn’t want to go because I didn’t want them to say, ‘You won’t be able to play in your senior season now. You’ll have to rest it,’ which just sounded awful to me,” Ruegsegger said. “To anyone that would be.”
No one noticed the injury as Ruegsegger rolled out to 16-0 on the season before suffering her first of only three losses this spring. She ended up finishing the season 21-3 overall and played a key role in the team’s success.
“She had huge expectations, and she lived up to every single one,” Muterspaugh said. “She never said a word (about the injury).”
Her play spoke for her. She captured her second-career Hancock County title with a No. 2 singles championship in 2019 and a No. 1 singles title this year.
She scored a key Hoosier Heritage Conference victory over eventual team champion Delta this season, and helped guide the conference runner-up Marauders to an 18-4 team record with her leadership.
“I can’t stress how important that was from a standpoint of making everyone else comfortable. She was the queen. It didn’t matter if you were No. 27 on the team or you were No. 2 right behind her, she treated everybody as an equal,” Muterspaugh said. “When you have your top player, who is your hardest worker doing that, man, that’s the culture you want to have, and we’re very fortunate to have had her here.”
Ruegsegger’s desire to win powered the Marauders to the Hancock County team title every season of her career and the program’s seven consecutive sectional championship and 15th overall.
“She comes from the first family of girls tennis. The Ruegsegger family, they’ve had two other girls and the family taught them,” Muterspaugh said. “It went from Hannah to Clara to Lydia. As we got better, it got better.
“To get to the next level, you have to have Lydias. We’ve done it where you can win with athletes, but you want the kid that’s obsessed. The kid that has the passion.”
Ruegsegger has fortitude as well.
“Two weeks ago, we went in and I got an x-ray. They thought it was a Lisfranc. They warned me if the MRI showed that the ligament was no longer connected, then I’d have to get surgery. If it wasn’t, then it would just be a boot,” Ruegsegger said.
“They said best-case scenario would be really bad bone bruising. The next Tuesday, we got an MRI and it’s the third metatarsal. It was very close to breaking. So, no surgery, but if it had broken, then I would have had to have had surgery.”
Corrective surgery would have meant no freshman season in college. In a way, Ruegsegger’s loss to Fishers’ Lucy Loy at team regional was a blessing in disguise.
Any additional play on the court at regional and beyond might have sidelined her for nearly a year. Luckily, there was no and will be no substantial break.
“I’m in a boot for six weeks. Three if the pain is gone next week,” Ruegsegger said. “If that happens, then I’ll get a steel-plate insert for my shoe. So, I’m honestly happy with the result. Obviously, the boot stinks, but I can still stand and hit and I can do drills and help them out out here. I thanked Lucy. I told her, thanks for beating me.”
There’s always next year for Ruegsegger, but she isn’t moving forward without the past.
“For a lack of a better word, great,” Ruegsegger remarked on her season and time at Mt. Vernon. “It was so much fun. I definitely think it was the best senior year I could have asked for. The girls were awesome to play with. I felt like we really meshed as a team. Everyone did so good and worked really hard. I think, everyone was just very grateful to have something.”
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2021 Daily Reporter Girls Tennis Team
Singles
Lydia Ruegsegger, Mt. Vernon
Abby Blachly, New Palestine
Brianna McConnell, Greenfield-Central
Jaclyn Layton, Greenfield-Central
Carly Wilkerson, Mt. Vernon
Hannah Smith, Mt. Vernon
Doubles
Lexi Shelton/Ceci Bulmahn, Mt. Vernon
Maddie Swingle/Anna Isger, Mt. Vernon
Makayla Price/Leah Puckett, Greenfield-Central
Lily Haeberle/Lucy Miller, New Palestine
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