The answers spurt out simultaneously, all three kids speaking in unison.
“10.”
“Gresham Arthur Academy.”
“Fourth.”
“Since we could walk.”
Patrick, Haley and Lauren Wood have a tendency to respond to inquiries at the exact same time, which is fitting since they were born close together. The 10-year-old triplets from Gresham, Ore., aren’t just unique because triplets represent fewer than 0.1 percent of annual births in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
They’re also unique in that they just so happen to be one of two sets of triplets currently honing their tennis skills at the Vancouver Tennis Center.
There’s also Camas residents Amelia, Madeline and Fiona Chang, all 4, who picked up the sport after having fun at the tennis center during a Halloween party last year.
Siblings playing tennis isn’t anything new. Sisters Serena and Venus Williams have won individually and have accrued 14 Grand Slam Women’s Doubles titles. Bob and Mike Bryan, identical twins, won an Olympic gold medal for doubles in 2012. But as Wendy Chang, the mother of the Chang triplets, points out, pairing three siblings is a conundrum.
“I don’t know what they are going to do about tennis,” Chang said. “There’s three, so you’re missing one if you play against each other. If you’re playing doubles, you have one extra. I’ll have to figure that out.”
For the Wood triplets, who sit next to each other in class, that issue has resolved with time. Patrick and Lauren are more into playing tennis than Haley is now, and Patrick and Lauren said they don’t have much desire for doubles long term. All three of them do, however, have a fierce competitiveness that will benefit their tennis future, said their mother, Marcy Wood, who played tennis at Seattle University.
“They’re extremely competitive for every single thing. All three of them, with each other,” Wood said. “If it’s time to take a shower, ‘I’m going first.’ If there’s a little bit of food, they want their piece — the biggest one. If there coach says, who’s going to run fastest …’ ”
“I’m going to run fastest,” Patrick interrupts.
“Everything you can imagine, they compete to get the best of it,” his mother continued. “School. Tennis. Home. Life. Because they’ve always had to in a way. Not one of them is behind the other.”
Finding own paths
Wood said she likes tennis because it’s a “sport where you can really learn about yourself.” The sport’s individual nature, in a backhanded way, also serves triplets well, she said.
“It’s different than other sports in that you hit every ball. You don’t have to wait,” Wood said.
Like Wood, Chang played in high school and college, winning a state championship at Bellevue High School, and later playing at Yale University. Her triplets enjoy tennis, but since they’re so young, she’s not sure if they’ll want to stick with the sport.
“If you work hard at something, you get better, and that’s really satisfying,” Chang said. “If they happen to like and want to stick with it, like I did, and want to play competitively, like I did, I would love it, but I’m not pushing them in that direction.”
The girls were born within minutes of each other, and each has their own personality, Chang said. Madeline, the middle child, is a hard worker. While Chang was explaining that Fiona is creative and in her own world, Fiona walked away from her mother and sisters to stare at the tennis courts — in her own world. And Amelia, the youngest, is caring.
“She thinks she’s the big sister,” Chang said.
Chang will buy the same patterned outfits for the girls, but not in the same colors. They get to choose their clothes each day, and sometimes decide to wear the same pattern, but sometimes they diverge.
“I still don’t know what I’m going to do when they get older to make sure they feel like individuals,” Chang said. “But their personalities are so different — what they like to do, how they are. So far I haven’t had to go out of my way to make sure they’re different. They like to do different things. They have different interests and personalities and they seem to be doing that on their own.”
