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Aubrey Kragen
USC women's tennis head coach
Alison Swain looks for four characteristics in her ideal recruit. She seeks out young women whose tennis is on the rise, who have potential to improve, who love playing the game and who are hard-working.
Newport Beach native
Danielle Willson had all those traits. There was just one problem: Swain had already reached the maximum number of scholarships she could dole out during that recruiting cycle.
Despite being a lower-ranked recruit than what Swain usually looks for, the second-year head coach invited Willson, who goes by Dani, to walk on at USC. Willson was entertaining scholarship offers from UC Santa Barbara, Arizona and Oregon, but ultimately decided to take the chance and walk on at USC, with hopes of playing well enough to eventually earn a scholarship.
Willson's tennis journey looks quite different than those of her USC teammates. Soon after first picking up a racquet at the age of seven, she experienced a moment of painful serendipity. At a summer tennis camp, a fellow attendee brought a racquet to a water balloon fight and accidentally hit Willson right under the eye, where she still wears a scar to this day. The camp's director felt so guilty about the incident that he gave Willson a free week of private lessons. After that, she was hooked. As her tennis career intensified over the years, Willson had to choose whether to attend a traditional high school or to take online courses, which would allow her to travel to more tournaments.
"My mom looked into that and ultimately thought the high school route would be better for me to get more experience and develop study habits so I could do better in college," Willson explained.
So Willson prepped at Corona Del Mar High School, enjoying a successful career that culminated in winning the CIF team and singles titles her senior season. But since she could only squeeze high-level tournaments in on the weekends, she knew she'd have to work that much harder to snag one of USC's eight full ride women's tennis scholarships.
"When I committed here, I started working with a psychologist and started locking down on my tennis with my coach," Willson said. "My coaches have always told me that if I just use my talent and practice, I can reach my goals. I worked hard in the gym as well, sprinting and getting all the basics down, so that when I came here I could build that up more."
Willson's dedication led to immediate success in Cardinal and Gold. In the fall of 2018, she went 10-1 in singles play. She cemented her spot as the No. 6 singles player on the roster and worked her way into the doubles starting lineup as well.
She's not only performed well for a walk-on; her results have been undeniably impressive. This spring, she was one of just five players on the Top 50 teams in the nation to start off with 11 straight wins.
Though Swain had originally planned on evaluating Willson's status after her first season came to a close, the freshman's attitude and results helped Swain make up her mind even faster than that.
"We had talked about a scholarship opening up in the future, but didn't really know if she would end up in this place where she was an impact player for us," Swain said. "She's really proven that she is so quickly. Her determination and her focus and how great she is as a competitor made it so clear as the year has gone on that she's a staple of our lineup."
Swain woke up on March 11 feeling like it was Christmas morning. She'd decided to surprise Willson with a scholarship for the 2020 class, and had figured out the perfect way to do it. During a team building exercise that afternoon, she split the team into groups of three and made them partake in a scavenger hunt and a word puzzle. Once they found their items, they returned to Swain and were handed an envelope filled with words that they had to unscramble to form a sentence. Each's group's sentence was some sort of inspirational quote, but Willson's group uncovered an incredibly special message:
"HARD WORK LEADS TO ACHIEVING YOUR DREAMS. CONGRATULATIONS DANI, YOU'VE EARNED A SCHOLARSHIP."
Willson's teammates abandoned their puzzles and embraced her excitedly.
"I cried happy tears," Willson said. "It all came together and I finally realized that all this hard work paid off ... I called my mom right away and told her, because she's the person behind my tennis and she's supported me through all these years. It was really cool to see her reaction."
Though Willson achieved her goal of earning a scholarship at USC, the hard work continues. She's got plenty of tennis ahead of her, and plenty of time to improve before reaching her ultimate goal of playing professionally. After how quickly she accomplished her first objective, there's no doubt she'll be a formidable force in the tennis world for years to come.
