Samaya Smith has had where’d-you-come-from moments on tennis courts.
“People would ask, ‘Are you a freshman?’ ” said her mother, Le’gretta Smith. “They hadn’t seen her or heard of her.”
That is understandable. Samaya, a junior at Warren Central High School, is in her first season of high school tennis.
Where did she come from?
From Indiana’s First Family of track and field.
Where is she going?
Maybe to the top of the podium in the state singles tournament, which will be held Friday, June 13 and Saturday, June 14 at Park Tudor School.
Samaya is 22-0, winning six postseason matches by a cumulative score of 72-4. She is Indiana’s No. 1-ranked under-18 player.
An older sister, Laila, is a state champion in the hurdles. A younger sister, Kira, is a state champion in the indoor high jump. Her mother has coached Warren Central to three team state championships. Her father, Steve, was a Pan American Games silver medalist in the high jump.
Two cousins, Ashley and Ahlivia Spencer, ran to state and Big Ten titles. And Ashley won an Olympic bronze medal.
How does a girl live up to that?
Laila, especially, cast a shadow over her younger sisters, according to the parents. Laila was once a tennis player, too, but chose to concentrate on track.
“It gave everybody else a chance to breathe,” their father said. “Samaya said, ‘I want to do tennis.’ ”
Of course, she is athletic. You don’t qualify for the state meet in the 100- and 300-meter hurdles if you aren’t.
That is not why she embraces tennis, though. It is a sport of solitude and aptitude.
“You’re out there, and it’s just you and your opponent, going back and forth,” said Samaya, 17. “But you need a good mentality.
“I kind of like the fact of thinking through everything and taking your time for all your shots.”
‘It’s her brain’
For someone who relaxes by assembling 3,000-piece puzzles, tennis is built for Samaya as much as Samaya is built for tennis. One point at a time, she picks opponents apart.
“In-game, her ability to make adjustments is probably her best asset,” said John Patterson, a Warren Central coach. “Everybody will say it’s her ground strokes, but it’s not. It’s her brain.”
All three Smith sisters have been tennis players. The family has spent an estimated $80,000 toward their development. The mother is a data administrator at the NCAA and the father an academic adviser at University of Indianapolis.
Laila, coming off her freshman track season at Texas Christian University, eventually put down her racket. So did Kira.
Samaya always loved this sport, beginning at age 10. She has spent brief periods at the academies of tennis greats Chris Evert and Stan Smith at Boca Raton, Florida, and Hilton Head, South Carolina, respectively.
She created a ripple in the tennis community three years ago when she went to a third-set tiebreaker against Columbus North’s Kathryn Wilson. Wilson, now at Purdue University, became the state singles champion in each of the past two years.
Another Warren Central coach, Daryl Whitley, said Samaya’s game has “grown exponentially” since then.
“We tell her what she needs to do, and she executes,” said Whitley, a member of Indiana’s high school tennis hall of fame. “It’s a coach’s dream come true to have a student that has that tennis IQ.”
Climbing the ranks
Samaya achieved a breakthrough by winning the U.S. Tennis Association’s Level 3 Open at Eau Claire, Wisconsin, in mid-April. Beginning in the round of 32, she won three matches against No. 1-ranked girls from Iowa, Kansas and Oklahoma, and a No. 2 from Virginia.
She improved her national recruiting ranking to 92nd in the 2026 class, beating three girls ranked ahead of her. She was down match point in the round of 16 before pulling out a 6-3, 4-6 (15-13) victory.
Moreover, Samaya won the tournament’s sportsmanship award. She might begin matches as an adversary but often winds up having opponents ask to take a selfie together.
“I try to stay as respectful as I can to them,” she said, “and hope they do the same.”
If there is a player she tries to emulate, she said, it is Coco Gauff. Similar grip, similar strokes.
Coincidentally, Samaya won a regional June 7 shortly after Gauff won the French Open. Samaya beat Franklin Community junior Marnie Moore 6-0, 6-0.
“My coach said you don’t get to play players as good as her a lot in our life, so just enjoy it,” Marnie said. “She’s just really explosive when she hits. So, for me, I just really didn’t know which way to run because she has every shot.”
Forging an identity
Samaya’s next match is a quarterfinal against University High junior Laurel Buttrick (20-3) at 2 p.m. Friday. Semifinals and finals are at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Saturday, respectively.
A year ago, it was also about a state championship, albeit in track and field. The three Smiths, plus teammate Jila Vaden, made it happen. It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance for the sisters to be state champions together.
The parents encouraged their daughters to forge separate identities. Tennis is Samaya’s. She told her parents she wanted to chase another dream.
“Samaya gave up everything to help us,” the father said. “I said, ‘You do you, honey.’ ”
No girl from an Indianapolis public school has won state singles since Erika Quebe of Perry Meridian in 1997.
Samaya’s lane doesn’t have many more hurdles. She is on track to a new Smith legacy.
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David Woods is a Mirror Indy freelance contributor. You can reach him at dwoods1411@gmail.com.
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