Peyton Stearns says lack of crowd support vs Williams sisters 'stung'

Mason native Peyton Stearns and her doubles partner, Marta Kostyuk, knocked off Serena and Venus Williams in the Cincinnati Open WTA doubles draw.

After the match, the 24-year-old Stearns, who attended grade school at St. Margaret of York and took online classes in high school, suggested that she’d love her hometown crowd to show more support for her.

“It’s awesome playing with Marta here in my hometown,” Stearns said in the on-court, post-match interview. “Maybe next round we can get it a little louder for us, you know?”

“I kind of expected it going into the match, but it kind of stung a little bit that this is my hometown and it’s just a couple of family and friends cheering for us out there in our box,” Stearns added, per The Enquirer’s Shelby Dermer. “I won’t hold it against anyone as long as they come out next round and give us some love.”

Stearns, the 2022 NCAA champion for the Texas Longhorns, finished her sophomore season with a 33-2 overall record in singles play.

In 2023, Stearns reached the third round of the French Open in women’s singles with an upset of Jelena Ostapenko – her first-ever Top 20 victory.

Stearns, who grew up five miles from Lindner Family Tennis Center, made her first appearance at the Mason tournament in Aug. 2021 as a wild card and lost a women’s singles qualifying match against Su-Wei Hsieh.

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This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Peyton Stearns says lack of crowd support vs Williams sisters ‘stung’