Published May 29. 2026 11:54PM<\/p>\n
Northwestern Lehigh standout headed to Division 1 program in Charlotte, N. Carolina<\/p>\n
Charlotte, North Carolina, is a beautiful and growing area and Queens University of Charlotte captures both of those elements.<\/p>\n
Last summer, Queens was reclassified as Division 1 for all sports by the NCAA as it continues to grow and evolve.<\/p>\n
Mallory Conner discovered both the area and the university as she scouted for a place to continue her education and her tennis career. Actually, the school came on to her radar late in the process but impressed her immediately.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was amazing because when we went down, they kind of caught my attention. I was interested in other schools that I had checked out during the process, but everything fell into place there for me,\u201d said Conner, who reached the District 11 Class 2 A final for three straight seasons this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was beautiful down there and the coach, the program, everything just felt like a perfect fit for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
For some, the fact that Charlotte is about a nine-hour drive would be a problem. Conner, though, was looking to be outside of the area and have the chance to experience being on her own. The majority of schools she had looked at were three to five hours away, so Queens was a big jump from that level, but considering it was a perfect fit, the added time was no problem.<\/p>\n
As a student at Northwestern, Conner didn\u2019t even have a tennis team to be a member of, so she had to play in a number of USTA tournaments and play independently in order to make her mark and earn the trips \u2014 and success \u2014 that she had in high school tennis. Conner did have the team experience as a competitor in both basketball and track.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a unique experience to not have a team to compete with, but being in basketball and track gave me the chance to experience being part of a team and a community. This whole community is great, and I am so glad that I got to experience that as part of a team,\u201d said Conner.<\/p>\n
In addition to her trips to the District 11 finals in each of the past three seasons, Conner has also taken the Times News Girls Tennis Player of the Year award for three straight seasons. Her academic and athletic opportunities at Northwestern Lehigh have helped prepare her for what is going to be coming at her in the fall.<\/p>\n
\u201cI enjoyed competing here at Northwestern Lehigh. I made a lot of great friends through school, and being a part of the track team and basketball team, and we had a lot of fun times together,\u201d said Conner. \u201cAt the same time, I\u2019m really excited about going to college and having a lot of new experiences and face the academic and athletic challenges. I\u2019m really glad that things came together for me to go to Queens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Things truly fell into place well for Conner when she made the trip to Charlotte, even though the school was a late entrant in her decision process. Of course, her ideal school had to have a tennis program, which Queens has. Now, she will also get to play at the Division 1 level and face strong competition.<\/p>\n
Academically, Conner was looking to major in business and finance, and Queens was able to check that off her list as well. The McColl School of Business at Queens ranks in the top 15% of business and finance programs nationwide. That gave her the strong athletic and academic opportunities that she was looking for in her next phase.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was great how everything just came together. The school has everything that I wanted and the area is beautiful, so it made the decision pretty easy,\u201d said Conner. \u201cThe more I found out about the school and the area, the better it was for me and I knew it was a great fit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Northwestern tennis standout Mallory Conner is headed to Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina. TN FILE PHOTO<\/p>\n
Northwestern\u2019s Mallory Conner signs to play tennis at Queens University of Charlotte during a ceremony at the high school. MIKE HAINES\/TIMES NEWS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published May 29. 2026 11:54PM Northwestern Lehigh standout headed to Division 1 program in Charlotte, N. Carolina Charlotte,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-248539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}