SPRINGVILLE — She might be low-key and even a little shy, but Jamie Bankhead knows how to display her many talents without saying a single word.
Currently, the Springville senior is swinging her racquet as the Red Devils' No. 1 singles player on the tennis courts. But though she's played the sport since she was eight years old, she didn't get serious about tennis until recently, mainly because she's had so many other fortes keeping her busy.
For years the quiet daughter of an LDS Church mission president split most of her free time between horses and the piano. Eventually her talents on the piano led her to a tour of France and Switzerland. She was involved in some small competitions in that area along with an older sister.
"It was a fun experience, especially meeting new kids, but it made me nervous to play in front of people," Bankhead said about her experience in Europe.
After falling in love with the Alps on her two-and-a-half week trip, she returned home for just one week only to have to turn around and leave again to join her family for her father's mission presidency in Montevideo, Uruguay.
For a girl who'd never been so far away from home and never immersed in such different cultures, just the thoughts of spending her junior and senior years in a foreign country made her heart skip a beat.
"I didn't want to go," she admitted, adding, "but I knew it would be a good experience."
She attended a private American school during her junior year in Montevideo and spent her school hours with the children of embassy workers and other American workers in Uruguay. The school allowed her to learn about the Uruguayan culture but kept her in an English-speaking world, which she was thankful for in some ways and a little sad about in others, lamenting her inability to pick up the language as quickly as she would have liked.
She spent much of her free time helping her mother cook for the missionaries and working on her scrapbooks, and her parents finally agreed to let her come back to Utah for her senior year after one of her friends returned to the state at Christmas last year.
"We had decided to let her come back. It would have been a sacrifice for us to miss her senior year, but we were prepared to do it," said mother Jann Bankhead, who noted that her husband's illness that caused the entire family's early return was probably a bit of a mixed blessing, allowing them to spend the rest of their daughter's school time with her after only nine months in Uruguay.
The Uruguayan/American school didn't offer a tennis program, and the move also made her give up her English Riding pony, T.J., perhaps her biggest love.
"Horses were a big part of her life," said her mother, who added that in addition to doing some Western riding with her father and going on pack trips, the shy tennis player loved to ride T.J. in English riding shows from the time she was about nine until she was 15.
"She was really good. She won a grand championship in an Arizona competition," said Jann, remembering all of her daughter's riding shows and competitions.
But for now, her piano and horses are part of a different life, and the young Red Devil is focused on her tennis game.
She realizes she might not be quite as accomplished a player as some of the others in the valley or in the state who are playing on the same stage, but she relishes the opportunity to play the top singles girls nonetheless.
"Some of these girls are so good. It's fun to play someone that good because there's no pressure. I like to hit against girls that hit hard and consistent because they force me to play better," Bankhead noted.
And she's working so hard on this tough sport because she wanted to be a part of a team in high school.
"I just wanted to be on a high school team, and I don't play another sport," acknowledged the girl who counts among her favorites such diverse books as "The Count of Monte Cristo," "Pride and Prejudice" and the Harry Potter series.
So for now, her piano and her horses are taking a back seat to her studies and one last chance to not only be a part of, but to be the No. 1 player on her own Springville High School tennis team.
E-mail: jolsen@desnews.com