Maria Steinbach, once a top 5 U.S. junior and a top 8 world junior who hit the ball so hard she was nicknamed “The Neutron Bomb,” kind of wishes things had turned out differently. 

Not the family, mind you. She wouldn’t change a thing about her marriage to Tyler or her children — Ryan, Chrissy and Clay. But the way her tennis career ended left a bad taste in her mouth. 

She was riding high in the summer of 1978, and then her life started to fall apart. Al Rothschild, her father, coach and Rock of Gibraltar, as she once described him, passed away, and within two weeks Maria was on campus at BYU, even more disoriented than freshmen generally are. Although she made All-America in both of her years as a Cougar, she wasn’t the same player. Her heart wasn’t in it. 

The good news is that she met Tyler, a BYU baseball player, and they married when Maria was 20, but there was no erasing the disappointment she felt when other top players moved on to pro tennis and she didn’t. There was no question Maria had the chops – she had been runner-up to Hana Mandlikova at the French Junior Open. 

“For a long time, it was hard because my friends were on TV, my contemporaries were on TV,” she says now. “It was difficult.” 

Does she wish she had kept it together for a longer career as a player? “Yes … yes … yes. I do,” she said. 

She was so distraught after arriving on the BYU campus in Provo, Utah, she says that by Thanksgiving she had gained 50 pounds. 

Her father had died on Aug. 14, and Maria had to turn down a wild card into the U.S. Open. Instead she was on a flight to Provo. 

“My world was turned upside down,” she said. “I remember sitting there at the terminal and my mom was like, ‘OK, you gotta go. It’s time to get on the plane.’ And I was the last person. They were getting ready to close the gate. And I was like, ‘I don’t want to go.’” 

When she got to BYU, she said, “I just flopped and went down the tubes.” 

There was also the matter of feeling like an outsider at BYU. Neither Tyler nor Maria was Mormon on a campus where, as Maria recalls, less than 500 among a student population of 27,000 were non-Mormon. Most of those 500, she said, were athletes. Tyler had grown up in Utah and was more accustomed to being a minority than Maria was. 

After her sophomore year, she and Tyler moved to Salt Lake City, where Maria began teaching tennis. They moved to St. Louis in 1983 and she began her career as a pro at Frontenac Racquet Club and Old Warson. Always shy as a young woman, Maria finally came out of her shell by teaching the game. 

“I was brought up to eat, sleep and drink tennis,” she said. “I was very naïve, very sheltered, not worldly whatsoever. Developmentally, I’m not sure that’s the greatest thing for somebody.” 

By teaching tennis, she said, “I became a real people person. I enjoyed the people that I taught, many of whom became real good friends in St. Louis.” 

Oldest son Ryan eventually went to DeSmet and played shortstop on its state champion baseball team, then played ball in the Baltimore Orioles’ system. Chrissy was a swimmer at Illinois State. Husband Tyler, a pitcher, stayed involved in sports and in 2018 was inducted into the Greater St. Louis Amateur Baseball Hall of Fame. 

The family member who went in a different direction was the youngest, Clay. Instead of sports, he found his niche in tools and machinery. He went to Ranken Tech and became a machinist. 

Clay also became a foster parent. He and his wife, Liz, are now on No. 8, a 4-month-old. Unlike adoptive parents, foster parents are tasked with reunifying children with their birth parents. 

“We’re extremely proud of what he’s accomplished,” Maria said. “With this fostering thing, it takes special people to be able to foster, to love them and then to have to give them back.” 

While Tyler continues in his career as a financial advisor, Maria found a new family role. Some nine years ago she began looking after Ryan’s and Chrissy’s young children – four in all – during the day. All of the kids are now in preschool at least, which leaves Maria with more free time, or so she thought. 

Last August, her mom, former Triple A pro Mary Rothschild, now 96, took a turn for the worse and was moved into the St. Agnes Home in Kirkwood, just a few blocks from Tyler and Maria’s home in Warson Woods. By April, they finally had Mary’s home cleaned out and sold. 

At long last, Maria has a decent amount of free time on her hands. She checks in on Mary most every day, and plays singles tennis three or four times a week, as well as some pickleball with her brother and his friends. 

She still takes the grandkids at 3 p.m. on weekdays. And now there’s another child to help out with. 

“That’s a newborn,” she said. “That’s a whole different ballgame.” 

Maria Steinbach was inducted into the St. Louis Tennis Hall of Fame in 2000.