Cami Tuller was more of an introvert and didn’t participate in many sports growing up.
But an interest was sparked in tennis after learning her father played the sport in high school.
That led to Tuller deciding to make a trip to a court to hit balls with her father one day as an eighth-grader.
“I was like, wow, this is kind of fun,” Tuller said.
And that set the stage for Tuller finding a love for tennis and beginning to explore more ways to grow in the sport.
The work over the last few years has paid dividends for the Charlotte junior, who is thriving in her third season playing No. 1 singles. Tuller, who was voted the LSJ girls athlete of the week, won all four of her matches last week and owns a 10-1 record this spring for the Orioles.
The 10 victories are more than Tuller had during her freshman and sophomore seasons combined.
“Cam really put in the work in the offseason in the summer,” said first-year Charlotte coach Jeremy Tuller, who is Cami’s father. “She did winter tennis at MSU indoor and just put in a lot of work and we’re seeing the formation of a good all-around game that has been just fun to watch.”
The success this season was set up by the lumps Cami took early in her career. She won just two matches while playing No. 1 singles as a freshman in 2024 and won six matches last season while playing with an injured wrist.
“I think it definitely made me grow as a player and made my mental state grow a lot more knowing that I was probably going to go into this and lose, but I’m going to try to win as many points as I can,” Cami said. “I took the little victories like winning a game and winning a point or a set.”
Those experiences inspired Cami to spend a significant amount of time working on her game last offseason. She taught a tennis camp for several hours before practicing and also spent a lot of time playing in the winter.
That has put Cami exactly where she wanted to be after taking her lumps early in her career. She has already reached her goal of winning 10 matches this season and is determined to keep achieving more.
“Definitely want to get more wins against the teams I lost to last year,” Cami said. “(Being) a league champ would be really nice.
” … Qualifying for the state meet is definitely my biggest goal for this year.”
Contact Brian Calloway at bcalloway@lsj.com. Follow him on X @brian_calloway and Bluesky @briancalloway.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Charlotte’s Cami Tuller soaring on tennis court after taking early lumps
Reporting by Brian Calloway, Lansing State Journal / Lansing State Journal
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