WINTHROP — Amber Pritchard has a gorgeous smile.

Her face lights up and you can’t help but notice a beautiful grin, full of confidence and courage.

With each smile, the Winthrop senior pays tribute to her mother.

Kathryn Pritchard passed away when her daughter was a freshman, in 2010. She was 47. One of the things she’d always wanted for her daughter was to fix the teeth that grew awry during adolescence.

“I used to have the worst teeth in the world,” Pritchard said. “My Mom always used to beg, and she would always say, ‘I wish you had beautiful teeth like your brothers’, because my brother has the best smile in the world. When she passed away, (her siblings) decided they were going to get me braces.”

Since then, Pritchard has tried to give her mother all she wanted — and all she never had.

Despite adversity few girls her age endure, Pritchard is stronger and more committed to being the best she can be.

When Pritchard takes to the tennis court, she’s expressing a love of the game nurtured by her father. She dedicates her matches to the love of her mother. And she plays with a determination that demonstrates a devotion to herself.

“I just wanted to be amazing at things,” Pritchard said. “I picked up my grades. I’m almost a straight-A student. I just really wanted to do the best I can at everything to make her happy.”

Father and daughter

Pritchard started playing tennis around the age of 3. It was a sport her father, David, enjoyed, and it enabled them to connect.

“My dad was a real strong tennis player,” Pritchard said. “He’s the one that started me in everything. It was a connection that we always had. I can’t talk with my dad that much because he’s deaf. So that’s one thing that always kept us together because we spent a lot of time playing tennis. It was a good way to spend time with each other.”

Pritchard took private lessons, and playing tennis not only became a passion but an everyday occurrence. Her game matured and improved as she and her father shared their love of the game — and each other’s company.

“We played every day,” Pritchard said. “All year long, even in the winter, we’d go to play tennis for an hour. It was something that kept me going, and it got me really interested in sports.”

As her game evolved, so did her goals. She wanted to become the top singles player at Winthrop as a freshman, but the coaches at the time wanted to stick with the same team they had the previous year (despite Pritchard’s ladder-match record of wins against those players.)

She was limited to exhibition matches.

“I wasn’t too upset about it because I was still beating the No. 1 singles players in exhibitions because a lot of teams didn’t have exhibition players,” said Pritchard, who excelled at softball in middle school but had vowed to continue playing tennis in high school. “So I would ask to play them to see if I could beat them. I liked proving them wrong that I could win.”

That same year, Pritchard lost her mother.

Her parents were divorced when Pritchard was a young girl. There was even a time during which her mother had been out of state for several years. When she returned, Pritchard didn’t even recognize her.

“She came back when I was 10,” Pritchard said. “She showed up at my door and said, ‘Hi Amber, how are you doing?’ And I was like, ‘Hi, who are you?'”

Prior to her death, Pritchard’s mother suffered from epilepsy and was having as many as seven seizures a day. Alcohol also became problem as she dealt with constant pain.

Pritchard said she hardly saw her mother during her final two years because she was so ill and didn’t want her daughter to see her that way.

The last time Pritchard spoke to her mother, she had been drinking and asking for a ride to the hospital after having seizures. Pritchard didn’t like it when her mother drank too much.

She hung up.

“I didn’t give her the chance to talk to me because I was so mad that she was drinking,” Pritchard said. “I hung up the phone and ignored all her calls. Then I found out the next day that she had passed away that night.”

The next evening, Pritchard had gone to the movies. When she left the theater, her phone was filled with messages. Some came from her estranged brother. Her father left some others, as did other family members.

“I knew something was up,” Pritchard said.

Pritchard still went to tennis practice the next day. It was her way of moving on. It provided a place for comfort and a means to honor her mother.

“I didn’t want it to affect my life,” Pritchard said. “Not a lot of people knew about my mother. I didn’t want people to give me sympathy whatsoever. I just wanted to go out there and I wanted to play and I wanted to play for her.”

For mom

From that day forward, her matches became her offering.

“Every match I have, I just say, ‘This is for my mom,'” Pritchard said.

She was undefeated in doubles play as a sophomore and has been the team’s No. 1 singles player the past two years.

One of the reasons she endured was through the help of her family. In addition to her father, aunts and uncles have been significant supporters. Her mother had seven siblings who live in New Hampshire. Pritchard previously had little contact with them, but they became a large support system for her.

“They called me to check up on me, every single one of them,” Pritchard said. “Some would call me twice a day. They started showing up for my birthdays and invited me to Christmas stuff. Ever since then, they’ve really been in my life and helped me out a lot and continued to be there for me. They’ve really supported me in everything.”

They’ve followed her in tennis and in the other sports she plays — soccer and hockey.

Meanwhile, Pritchard’s whole perspective on life changed.

She was a self-described “OK” student, but she’s become an A student. She has sworn off drugs and alcohol because she saw the effects it had on her mother. She wants to live the life and have the happiness that her mother struggled to find.

“She didn’t even finish high school,” Pritchard said. “She didn’t go to college. I want to do all the things that she couldn’t do. It definitely made me who I am today.”

Pritchard plans to attend Unity College next year and study captive wildlife care and education. Her father is the only member of the family to have graduated from college, and she plans to be the second.

“I look at the struggles I’ve had in my life, but I wouldn’t be where I am today if I didn’t have these things,” she said. “I try to look at it in a positive way. Obviously, losing my mom is not a good thing, but it definitely helped me pick up on everything and made me want to do amazing at everything I do.”

The anniversary of her mother’s passing is later this month.

First-year Winthrop tennis coach Kristen Cady didn’t know Pritchard until this year. Cady has been impressed not only by her co-captain’s resilience, but by her leadership and work ethic. Pritchard is the player Cady counts on if she needs something done. Pritchard also works well with the younger players, and is always supporting her teammates and team.

“She’s very driven,” Cady said. “It’s nice to see someone so dedicated. She’s very tenacious. She’s a go-getter. She’s going to go far in life. She’s got a great head on her shoulders and would do anything for anybody.”

Pritchard’s senior season is bittersweet, she said. She’s used to looking forward to the following year. Her hope is that she can start a tennis club team at Unity.

This spring, she’s aiming high, hoping to go far in the MPA state singles and team tourneys. She reached the third round of the singles tournament in 2012, but lost in the first round in the team competition.

“I’m hoping to get through the qualifying rounds, and I would like to go to state and go further,” she said. “If I could possibly win it all, I don’t know, but that’s my goal.”

kmills@sunjournal.com

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