It’s a comeback story for the ages. After 35 years away from CHSAA tennis, Sister Marie Mackey, CSJ, the former varsity tennis coach at Bishop Kearney H.S., Bensonhurst, returned to the coaching ranks this past fall season to lead The Mary Louis Academy (TMLA), Jamaica Estates, varsity squad.

Sister Marie had been seeking an opportunity to get back into tennis, and luckily, a coaching position opened at her high school alma mater right before the start of the school year. It brought back a lot of memories,” Sister Marie said of this first season back. She also recently celebrated her 25th anniversary as a member of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph.

Growing up in Ozone Park, Sister Marie, who attended the parish and school at Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, developed a love for tennis during a summer family trip to Happy Acres in Connecticut after finishing third grade. Each morning of the two-week trip began with her taking lessons from a tennis pro, so she quickly learned the ins and outs of the game. That Christmas, she received a wooden Wilson tennis racket — further cementing her passion for the sport.

She continued to practice and play throughout her grammar school years, especially in a summer tennis program run by the NYC Parks Department. When she arrived as a freshman at The Mary Louis Academy in 1976, she recognized several girls she played against during those summer programs. At the time, TMLA did not have a tennis team, so Sister Marie and a handful of girls approached the athletic administration in the spring of 1977, and by the next spring, they had a team — the first in school history.

“We were a very strong team,” Sister Marie said. “In fact, we faced St. Francis Prep for the first-place title in our first year as a brand-new team.” Injuries unfortunately curtailed her competitive tennis career, so she accepted a full academic scholarship to St. Joseph’s College (now University) Brooklyn, Clinton Hill. As she earned her teaching degree, she played tennis sporadically since she still loved the sport.

Upon graduation, her first teaching job was at Bishop Kearney, where she was the varsity tennis head coach for five seasons. She later taught at St. Francis Prep in Fresh Meadows and TMLA but did not get involved with any tennis coaching.

Over the past 35 years, Sister Marie has served in numerous roles in her religious order — she’s currently director of campus ministry at St. Joseph’s University Brooklyn. Since she’s still very much in touch with the TMLA school community, she heard about the tennis coaching vacancy and contacted the athletic administrators to express her interest. She got the job and was delighted to be coaching alongside her longtime friend and former TMLA tennis coach Marianne Samothrakis, a fellow
TMLA alumna who taught math at the school in the room next to Sister Marie’s religion class.

“She’s so energetic and so lively and so passionate,” said first-year TMLA athletic director Christina Falsone. “That oozes out of her as she’s coaching. So it’s fantastic that she was available and was able to take that on and find that passion again through tennis.”

The Hilltoppers graduated six seniors heading into the fall season, so with a new coach and most of the team being freshmen, this was essentially a brand-new team. The coaches relied on the three returning co-captains — senior Sophia Rodriguez, junior Violet Dutton, and sophomore Mary Talbott — to get re-acclimated to the Catholic league after many years away.

“Aside from her knowledge on the mechanics of tennis, Sister Marie has helped me gain confidence in my playing ability as well as uplifting me in times of self-doubt,” Rodriguez said. “Knowing that I have a coach who believes in me helped me succeed, and I would not have been able to achieve such great results this season without her support.”

Though wins and losses were secondary this season to improvement, the Hilltoppers turned in an impressive fall campaign, reaching the quarterfinals of the Brooklyn-Queens championship tournament. “Everyone progressed,” Sister Marie said. “By the end of the season, they became better tennis players. That doesn’t mean they won more matches the longer they played. You could see that the skills improved during a very short season.”

In this full-circle tennis moment, Sister Marie thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to return to the court in a coaching role. She’s encouraged her student-athletes to continue improving this winter and spring to prep for another competitive CHSAA season. Hands down, this was truly a match made in heaven — second to “nun.”