Exclusive: EC’s Owen Conley and how he’s taking aim at the Metro League’s top prize

Owen Conley is a 4-star freshman playing on EC’s Varsity Tennis team. Despite his success, it hasn’t come by luck but determination and discipline. His training consists of a lot of outside practice that’s not at EC. Conley has minimal time off and trains for hours almost every day.

“I typically train like 14 hours a week, 2 hours a day maybe a little bit more I used to practice more like 10 hours but with the recruit stuff I definitely wanna keep up my standards so I’ll train as much as I need to keep that up with only about a day off each week.”

Despite being so invested in tennis, Conley is not consumed by it. He is a high achiever across the board, as he takes and excels in multiple honors and other high level classes at Eastside Catholic. Having other things to focus on when tennis isn’t going great is something that keeps him going through hard times.

“I take pretty hard classes, so I do that and then I play tennis, but I have enough other stuff. I just care about enough other things besides tennis. It’s to the point where it doesn’t affect me if I’m not playing great; it doesn’t ruin my day.”

He has other side hobbies and interests as well. Conley is a big gamer and experiments with other sports in his free time.

“I do other stuff. I play the drums a little bit, play basketball here and there, nothing else that serious, but obviously I play video games like Madden and NBA 2K.”

Conley also has big dreams for his first season at EC. Stepping into the team, Conley is a force to be reckoned with regardless of his age.

“I definitely wanna try to make states, so that’s my main goal for this upcoming season. I’d hopefully go undefeated during the regular season and take it from there. For state, one person is an alternate, and 6 people compete, so I want to be one of them.”

Being a high level tennis player requires a lot of outside training and travel for tournaments. But it’s not with a team, a lot of the travel is individual with just the Conley family in attendance.

“I mean it takes a lot of hard work, a ton of tournaments, a lot of traveling. So I probably travel to 10 tournaments a year. It’s out of state a lot: Alabama, Florida, Michigan, and Ohio. Random, random places, and you just go with your like your family and maybe a coach but I’ve never just gone with a coach.”

Conley didn’t just become a superstar overnight. He started working at an early age and has been set on becoming great. Since his first match Conley has been focused on improving day by day. His intense work ethic is one of the many things that has made him so successful in tennis.

“I’ve been playing since I was 4. My dad played tennis growing up so that was definitely a big thing and then my brother Aiden, he started playing a little earlier than me so I remember being in the car watching him play and I was like ohh I wanna try that and now I’ve definitely had some similar success to him right now.”

He has also had a few role models to look up to growing up. Conley also follows superstars in other sports besides tennis.

“Obviously Djokovic right now it’s probably the most famous tennis player keeps one obviously most grand slams #1 in the world for the longest and he’s just like super committed really passionate about what he does so I look up to that and then I’m also a big LeBron and NBA guy.”

Owen Conley starts his high school career on March 16th versus Ingraham high school. It’s the season opener for EC’s tennis team.