When she was 11, the soccer star discovered tennis.
"I played one game of tennis, Went home and asked my mother if I could take tennis lessons," Minkus says.
Her mother was reluctant. Tennis lessons were expensive. But Minkus borrowed a racquet and started practicing against the family's garage door.
Three weeks later, her mother relented. Tennis was in, but Minkus had a long climb ahead of her.
Most tennis stars start playing at the age of six. Minkus began at 13.
"Tennis was a challenge, because it wasn't easy for me," Minkus says. "I was working so hard, and I was good, but not as good as I wanted to be."
By the time she was 16, though, Minkus was ranked seventh in the East and earned an invitation to the under-17 national tournament.
Unfortunately, two weeks before the tournament, she tore a ligament colliding with the goalie in a soccer game.
"I was distraught," Minkus says. "To go to nationals was a dream for me."
Although she missed the tournament, she recovered quickly and was on the courts in time to be recruited by Harvard, where she played tennis her freshman and sophomore years.
But when the Ivy League passed a rule prohibiting tennis coaches from attending winter practices, Minkus decided that unsupervised practices were not intense enough for her. So Minkus returned to ice hockey for the winter.
Then, when the fall tennis schedule was cut back her senior year, she took up soccer again. She was the team's second-leading scorer and was named Ivy League Rookie of the Year.
Despite all the accolades she's received, Minkus says her success comes not from any athletic gift but from the lessons she learned when she was six.
"I'm quick," Minkus says, "but ability-wise, I don't match up to a lot of other people on the teams. Mentally, I have something different that other people with more ability don't need.
"People talk about a nose for the goal, for instance. But my goals are never pretty. They're hustling goals, little tip-ins. It all comes back to the intensity and being there 100 percent in all the games. And not missing any of those opportunities."
Then she pauses for a moment.
"That, I think, is definitely from my dad."