Horsham tennis star Steffi McDonald is back in Horsham and impressing for St Michael's

The Southeastern Oklahoma State University athlete has featured in the past two rounds for St Michael's in which they have beaten Kalkee and Central Park.

Against Kalkee she narrowly went down in the singles 7-8 to Jeff Friberg but won both her doubles matches.

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The following week she won her singles match against Central Park's Matthew Jones 8-5, before emerging victorious in two-out-of-three doubles matches.

McDonald is back in Australia following the completion of the NCAA Division II fall tennis season and is revelling in representing her junior club again.

"It's good to be back, I always really enjoy playing with St Michael's so it's really good to be playing there again," McDonald told The Wimmera Mail-Times.

McDonald said she "didn't have the best of seasons" on-court and chose to come home before the school semester had finished for health reasons..

"I struggled with my health, but I was playing well and I improved a lot in my doubles so I was happy with that," she said.

"But yeah it was just on the health side of it I couldn't compete and train as much as I wanted to.

"That's why I've actually come home, to try and sort all that stuff out."

At this stage McDonald hasn't placed a timeline on her return to the US and is just "trying to get everything right with [her] health".

Despite the adversity she has faced McDonald has enjoyed her time at her new university.

She previously attended Blue Mountain College in Missisipi.

"I enjoyed it, I have a lot of good people on my team that I get on really well with," she said.

"So that side of it was really good. It's just very full on and I guess you don't have much time for anything else."

Like the rest of the world, COVID-19 has had a significant impact on McDonald's day-to-day life this year. As a student athlete she was able to continue to play tennis, but under heavy restrictions.

According to the 21-year-old January through to May was "a very different season" and nearly everyone on her team got COVID-19.

"I never got it, I was lucky enough not to get it," she said.

"But I was constantly in and out of quarantine because you were a close contact with someone on the team that has it.

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"As a student athlete we weren't allowed to leave our rooms really unless it was to practise, go to class or to get food.

"Because we had such a big team compared to a lot of tennis teams, we had to break up our practises and you'd only have one hitting partner that you'd practise with everyday."

Reflecting on the differences between tennis in Australia and college tennis in the US, McDonald believes that it's "a very different style".

"It's a style I definitely wasn't used to going over, I think my style's changed a lot since I've been over there," she said.

"I would say you have a lot more tougher matches. There's not really a day where you have an easy match.

"Here you do get a lot of easy matches but there's no easy matches there, every day's tough. It's not just physically tough but you have to be very mentally tough as well."

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