Ishya Bhavsar & Macy Garwood: Seniors Ishya Bhavsar and Macy Garwood will play tennis at nearby universities next year after training together for almost a decade

From riding in a Chrystler rental van during 100 degrees Fahrenheit weather to sharing a room at the state tournament in Junction City, Kansas, seniors Macy Garwood and Ishya Bhavsar have played tennis together at Overland Park Racquet Club since they were 11 years old. 

“We must have been 11 or 12,” Bhavsar said. “And I just remember we were standing in a circle listening to the coach explain the next drill and [Garwood] was standing right next to me.”

With Bhavsar committing to Pomona College and Garwood committing to Scripps College, their friendly rivalry will continue past high school.

“We’ve gotten to be a lot better friends, especially through the college recruiting experience,” Garwood said. “I feel like we have so much fun because our personalities go so well together.”

While CMS and Pomona are separate schools with different athletic programs, they’re part of the 5C consortium and share the same campus, so Garwood and Bhavsar may find themselves sharing a classroom once again.

The 5C consortium is a system where each of the 5 schools in Claremont, CA — Pomona, Claremont Mckenna, Pitzer, Harvey Mudd and Scripps — specialize in a certain area of study. Students at 5C schools can take classes at the other schools as long as they take 20% of their classes at the school they actually attend.

“If my team can’t hit, I’ll always have someone I know nearby,” Garwood said. “It’ll be nice to be able to keep that going and have someone I can go train with or even just go to lunch with.”

With numerous tennis accomplishments, Garwood and Bhavsar explained that before committing, they were unsure whether to play tennis at a small Division III school or not play tennis for a larger, high academic university. 

“Academics come first for me,” Bhavsar said. “I was pretty set on playing Division III because I wanted to go to a school where even if I hurt myself so badly that I could never play tennis again, I would still be happy going to that school academically.”

With Bhavsar and Garwood’s shared concerns over playing college tennis, Kansas City United Tennis co-founder Eric Rand, with a wide network of college coach acquaintances, helped them work through the road of college recruiting.

“I’m close to putting almost 200 kids into college,” Rand said. “And [when] you’ve done this as long as me and Elliot have, you can earmark certain schools that might work for kids and [CMS and Pomona] were ones that we just went for.”

Rand said that despite Garwood’s chronic wrist injuries throughout high school and Bhavsar’s balance of trying to get enough tournament matches while taking a rigorous IB diploma course load, he had no trouble pitching the both of them to college coaches.

“They’re both extremely academic kids and to be able to play at two of the top Division III tennis schools and academic schools was a home run,” Rand said. “It was very rewarding as a coach to see that happen for both of the girls.”