It is funny how a saying from “The Wizard of Oz” can affect one’s look at life, especially when they are looking to be a collegiate athlete like Lucie Tuttle. 

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is not common to be attending tennis practices and matches on Friday nights. Restaurants, clothing stores, and grocery markets shut down to go watch the local high school football games that are played under those “Friday night lights”. There was a saying around the town that “there is no place like home”. In Lucie Tuttle’s case, with all of this madness around her, she would still be found training to perfect her serve and strike. 

Come high school, it was common for kids who were looking to play a collegiate sport to attend the Cascia Hall Preparatory School. Among these athletes were basketball, baseball, track and field, and of course, football players. Lucie was one of the few tennis players to come through Cascia Hall, however she made a dent in their records and influenced the coming generations. Playing in the doubles category, Tuttle took home second place in the Oklahoma Girls Division 5A State Championship in only her freshman year, and then the following year she stood second on the podium as well. Her coach telling her that “second is the first to lose” was not stopping Lucie, and even the younger girls apart of her local country club team cheered on and added numbers to the Cascia Hall tennis lineup. Suffering an injury her junior year, she was not able to compete in the division, however it only made her better as she stood first on the podium at the State Championship her senior year prior to committing to Fairfield University. 

A few broken wrists and sprained ankles never stopped Lucie. She would recover and return to how she was before. However, a head injury is not something you can just recover from, you have to develop and grow through the bad times, then the recovery process comes and that’s where you will get better. When on a family vacation in Lake George, New York in the summer going into her junior year of high school, Lucie underwent a tubing accident and was rushed to the hospital.

Once at the hospital, it was an immediate brain surgery that lasted 6 hours. With a patched up shattered skull and nasal cavity, there was no choice but to stay in the hospital for at least a week, especially no flying.

When she finally arrived back in Oklahoma, she couldn’t run or swim, and specifically could not play tennis. As a few months passed by, it was a slow growth period of accepting the injury, followed by the recovery process. And just like that, the spring came and Lucie stepped back onto the court and continued doing what she loved. Her senior year came and she decided to work as only a single in the competition field. In her mind, she single-handedly could win after an injury like she had and that is exactly what she did as she took home first at states. 

Despite an injury to the head, Lucie followed through with her dream of competing on the collegiate level. Unlike all of the athletes around her, she wanted to get out of Oklahoma rather than continue at a southern school. “I really wanted to test myself to see if there was truly no place like home,” and that is exactly how she found Fairfield University. In Spring 2021, Lucie decided to book a flight to Connecticut and look at a school she had never even heard of, and instantly she fell in love. Playing at a prospect camp on campus, her mom sat in the stands and watched Lucie win match after match. “I always watch my daughter play, except this time it was different. This time we were in a state we have never been in among people without even accents! This time she looked like she was actually having fun and I knew she found her new home,” said Mrs. Tuttle, “and that is where ‘no place like home’ comes in, I knew I could leave her miles and miles away because she trusted Fairfield as her home.”

With a 3.95 GPA as a Public Relations major at Fairfield, Lucie continues to excel as the only freshman on the Varsity tennis team.