ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT: Bobby Deye - Men's Tennis
Hayley Schletker, Xavier Athletic Communications
8/26/2020
GoXavier.com caught up with former men’s tennis player Bobby Deye, who recently returned from a deployment to the Middle East as a pilot for the Air Force Reserves/Air National Guard, his second deployment since graduating from Xavier in 2011 with a degree in Economics. Deye shares about his time at Xavier and his life after graduating below.
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Deye came to Xavier in December of 2008 as a midseason transfer from Florida State. A native of Cincinnati, Deye grew up playing with several of Xavier’s men’s tennis players at the time, including current Xavier men’s and women’s head coach, Doug Matthews. After his family moved to Naples, Fla., prior to his high school years, Deye ended up at Florida State before he transferred to Xavier, where he was a part of one of the best three-year stretches in program history.
“I played on the team (at FSU) for a couple of years then it just kind of came back full circle for me. I was looking for a little bit of a change, a little bit smaller school and I had a lot of family still living in Cincinnati at that time. I looked around and talked to Eric Toth, who was the coach at the time, and he had an opening and was able to make it work for me to transfer there, right at the end of December. I came in, in January, and I knew a lot of the guys on the team and it was just a great fit, and really ended up being a great move for me.”
“I went to a very small Catholic school in Naples, our graduating class was less than 100 people, so I actually was very comfortable and familiar with that smaller atmosphere and seeing a lot of familiar faces and your teachers and professors knowing who you are, knowing you on a first name basis, so for me it’s always been something I enjoyed more than the bigger college scene.”
“Florida State was a great experience – I have a lot of great memories, I had great teammates – but it was just a massive school. Coming back to a smaller school, a smaller environment like Xavier kind of reminded me of my high school years in some ways. It’s just a more intimate setting, something I’ve been more comfortable with, just seeing people you know and knowing your professors a lot better, and smaller classes. That was just a much better fit for me.”
During Deye’s time at Xavier, he was a part of two of Xavier’s three-straight Atlantic 10 Championships and NCAA Tournament appearances from 2008 to 2010. During the 2010 Atlantic 10 Tournament, Deye notched the match-winning point on three-straight days to complete the three-peat.
“We had a really strong program, and it was really cool because a lot of my teammates were guys I had grown up playing with, from when I was eight years old, playing with Doug and Ra'ees Ismail and those guys. We had all grown up playing together and it was a very tight-knit group because of that, we were very comfortable with one another. I think that was one of the big reasons we were able to have that sustained success throughout those years… Just a strong program with a very tight-knit team.”
The bonds with his teammates were not the only important relationships that Deye built while he was at Xavier, where he also met his wife Jennifer Auda, a fellow Xavier graduate.
“We actually met through a mutual friend, Christie Pleiman, who played on the women’s team for Xavier at the time. We met while we were out one night and it’s been quite a few years now we’ve been together. We’ve been together for quite a few years, and married for a couple and we live here in Madeira.”
Deye had always had an interest in aviation, and the Air Force Reserves/Air National Guard gave him an opportunity to pursue that while serving his country.
“I was an economics major at Xavier and throughout my college years, was really trying to play around with ideas that I was interested in, or things I wanted to get into after college and for me, for the longest time, school and tennis was the vast majority of what takes up most of my time and that was just my primary focus for as long as I could remember and as I got closer to graduating college, I started to really think about, ‘what do I want to do with my life?’ And aviation was always something that was very interesting to me. My older brother is a commercial pilot for Delta Airlines, and he’s quite a few years older than me, but he’s always been a great mentor for me, and I’ve always been very close to him and he took me flying a couple times when I was really young, and I just remember thinking it was such a cool thing and something I would love to do some day, potentially.”
“But tennis was my primary focus for so long… tennis and school, and just trying to succeed in those two things was enough. As I got closer to graduating college, I really started to look around at some options and talking with my brother primarily, thinking about potentially going down the aviation route. We looked around at a few different ways you could go with it and I discovered the Air Force Reserves and Air National Guard, which was something you could get into after college as long as you had your degree, and try to earn a pilot slot with one of these units.”
“To be able to serve your country, serve your community and also be able to get into aviation, was just something that I really was interested in, so I started really researching that about my junior year in college. At the same time, I started taking glider lessons during the summer in Cincinnati, I just wanted to see if it was something I truly wanted to do. And I loved it… loved taking lessons, loved learning about flying and I ended up getting my glider rating and then I worked on my private pilot’s license also, flying here locally in Cincinnati.”
“I did those two things and at the same time I was still looking at local units around the country, for the Air Force Reserve/Air National Guard and right after I graduated college I was actually fortunate enough to get an interview with a unit, and get accepted and they were actually the unit I’m still with today that sent me to pilot training.”
The team work Deye learned while he was a student-athlete is something he carries with him, even into his career.
“Growing up playing tennis, it’s more of an individual sport until you get to college. On rare occasions you get to play doubles, but a lot of it was just singles, so just a very individual sport. Once you do get to college, it becomes a much different type of experience, with a team atmosphere, team dynamic where you’re relying on one another, you’re cheering each other on, you’re playing a lot more doubles and you really learn a lot from that experience. I took a lot away from those experiences with me in to the Air Force.”
“I actually fly a C-130 Hercules, and we have a crew of usually six individuals at a time. So in the cockpit we have four people – two pilots, a navigator and a flight engineer – and we also have two loadmasters in the back, and all of us working together requires great teamwork and lot of those skill I built – working with others, working with a team – I think developed a lot of those skills when I was in college, playing on a team, playing at Florida State, playing at Xavier, I really think that helped a lot.”
Even with the vastly different circumstances Xavier student-athletes are dealing with now, Deye’s advice to current Musketeers is to “enjoy the moment.”
“It’s an incredible time in their life, and it’s going to go by in the blink of an eye, even if in the moment it doesn’t feel like it. Before they know it, they’ll be looking back on those years, wondering where the time went. Don’t take it for granted, work extremely hard, study hard, enjoy the sport and work hard with your team, and just try to enjoy these years that you have because I think they’re very precious years. "
"It’s an incredible experience to be a student-athlete at a great school like Xavier, so it’s quite a privilege. Don’t squander it... work hard, but have fun and learn as much as you can along the way, because it’s going to go by very fast.”
