How high-level tennis helped this Vietnamese family transition into American culture

When Elliott McDermed first met Doan Pham, he was scared of the first-generation Vietnamese-American father. He was scared of the way Pham didn’t talk or smile; of the way he sullenly stood as he watched his two young sons, Vinh and Nam, practice their tennis.

“I kind of kept my distance,” McDermed said to a round of laughter from the group of young adults seated in a conference room inside the Overland Park Racquet Club.

A decade after his first interactions with Doan Pham, McDermed, owner of Kansas City United Tennis club (KCUT) and a coach at the racquet club, can boast of coaching some of the best tennis players to come out of Kansas City in recent memory.

Perhaps more importantly, McDermed is also no longer afraid to approach Pham, who he now describes as “very friendly and outgoing.” McDermed and business partner Eric Rand coached not only Pham’s sons but a substantial number of nieces and nephews who are also collegiate-level tennis players.

Vinh played tennis at and graduated from UMKC in 2016 and Nam is in his final year at Shawnee Mission Northwest High — he’s committed to play next at Illinois State. Pham is also uncle to University of Memphis tennis twins Katherine and Josephine Cao, Southern Illinois tennis graduate Jennifer Dien and Collin County Community College player Thompson Tong.

“I just think it’s so remarkable that they’ve all been able to achieve a really, really high level,” McDermed said. “The national percentages of success just don’t match up with that at all. To get one in 10 of your students to play major college tennis is a big deal, and they’re batting like 100 percent, you know?”

It was this group of young tennis players that had gathered recently in the conference room at Overland Park Racquet Club, the facility in which they’ve trained since its opening in 2008.

Aside from Dien’s sister, all of the cousins and siblings grew up playing tennis through McDermed’s KCUT program.

In a new land

Following the conclusion of the Vietnam War in the 1970s, many Vietnamese emigrated to neighboring southeast Asian countries and America.

The tennis players’ grandfather arrived in the States from Ho Chi Minh City. The Cao twins’ father, Kevin, originally moved to Maryland before relocating to Kansas City, where he eventually met his future wife, Trinh. Thompson’s father, Qua, came to KC, too, and met his future wife here.

The family remained close for many years, their world not expanding much further than each other and a small group of people with whom they worshiped at a Buddhist temple.

The true beginning of their new life was hatched in the back of an electronic store owned by Jennifer’s father, Sam Dien, in which he employed all of the mothers of the family.

“I remember, they would tell us, ‘Don’t go into the front (of the store); if you want anything, just stay in the back and one of us will come help you,’” Thompson said.

Picking up a racquet

Jennifer, the oldest of the cousins, began playing tennis with her father. She was about 10.

“Just watching Jen, we were like, ‘Oh let’s play,’ and we were like, ‘5 years old, might as well’ ... there was nothing to lose,” Katherine said. “So then her dad just started coaching us.”

The rest is history. All of the siblings followed Jennifer’s footsteps by joining KCUT, becoming some of the top tennis players in Kansas, and eventually heading off to play in college.

Their development in the game expanded their parents’ social circle.

“They’d go to the temple, and that’s mainly all they hung out with until all of us started playing tournaments and traveling,” Thompson said. “That’s when they started branching out, meeting other people. But until then, they strictly stuck to their Buddhist group.”

Qua, Thompson’s father, agreed, saying tennis helped the family come out of its shell and assimilate into American culture.

“We came in a lot more connection with the kids when we traveled with them, learned their way, communicating with them and just overall trying to help them to advance to the next level,” Qua said.

“We spend a lot of time when they start to play in tournaments until their senior year (of high school),” Kevin Cao, Katherine and Josephine’s father, said. “And we have a lot good times, we have a lot of bad times, sometimes we come home late. But we have a lot of good times and we learn a lot of things and meet a lot of people.”

Time wasn’t all they invested. Tennis can be expensive. But seeing their kids earn scholarships has been rewarding.

There was the time that members of the family nearly got kicked out of a tournament in Wichita for rooting too loudly for Jennifer, or the times they’ve cheered on the twins when Memphis has played tournaments in Kansas City or Columbia.

Today, as Nam is preparing for competition at Illinois State, many of the elder members of the family are moving on with their lives, too. Jennifer works in real estate in Arizona, and Vinh is eyeing a career with an aviation company in KC.

They still pause sometimes to reflect on the profound impact tennis has had on their lives.

“If you see that your kids have the passion of playing tennis and you want to give them that passion of what they want, that’s how we helped them,” said Kevin Cao, father of the sisters playing for Memphis. “As long as you invest in it long term, it pays off in the end.”

This story was originally published December 31, 2018 at 11:29 AM.