Looking Back… Charging Forward

As we begin a new year, ATA players will be setting their goals for 2016. One of our former students, Kendall Dabaghi was recently written up in Forbes magazine. This got me thinking about our players of the past, many of whom have set and accomplished high goals.

If you walk around the ATA campus, you will see many banners recognizing players from our past.

In case you have not heard about some of these historical moments, I have included a top 10 listing of ATA players and their accomplishments from the past:

(1) Ashley Weinhold (currently playing on the WTA tour) wins Girls 18s National Hard Courts in singles and receives a wildcard into the main draw of the US Open where she played the #4 seed on Louis Armstrong Stadium. Ashley also won 16s Clay Courts in singles the year prior.

(2) Jamie Friedland’s thirty-one match national tournament winning streak in singles catapulted his national ranking in Boys 16s from #156 to #6. The highlight of this winning streak was Jamie winning 9 matches in the back draw and winning consolations of Winter Nationals.

(3) Brandon Davis (former student-athlete and current ATA coach) wins Texas Grand Slam (TGS) 16s singles title and then wins TGS 18s singles title the following year. Brandon went on to play in the NCAA Finals his junior year at the University of Illinois.

(4) Stephanie Kusano wins back-to-back singles titles in 18s at TGS, and later went on to lead Cal-Berkley to the NCAA semifinals her senior year.

(5) Josh Hagar (currently in his junior year at Notre Dame) goes from not having any scholarship offers worth considering due to being injured 9 months of his junior year to receiving offers from Notre Dame, Northwestern, Harvard, Princeton and Rice the following year. Josh went on to star at Notre Dame, playing line #2 singles by his sophomore year.

(6) Josh Hagar launches the Playing for Glimmer campaign and raised $150,000 for Glimmer that funded 5 wells, 1 reservoir, a health post, and 2 schools. This inspired Breck Spencer to create and spearhead the Walk for Water event that raised over $20,000 two years after the Playing for Glimmer campaign was initiated.

(7) Eliot Blatt gave $4,000 of his own Bar-Mitzvah money to fund a well in Ethiopia, and then raised an additional $10,000 in donations for A Glimmer of Hope.

(8) Payton Holden (current ATACP student-athlete) sweeps the 16s Singles and Doubles Titles at TGS.

(9) Abigail Chiu (current ATACP student-athlete) wins Easter Bowl 14s doubles title and then reaches the doubles finals the following year in Girls 16s.

(10) After overcoming three knee surgeries, Blake Davis grinded his way to a 6th place finish at 18s Clay Court Nationals and later earned a full scholarship to Florida State University where he played Line #2 Singles and Line #1 Doubles for most of his career. Upon graduation, he landed a premier job with Wells Fargo Wealth Management division.

An inspiring fact supplied by Coach Brandon Davis: during the first year of ATA while we were building this facility and training players at Barton Creek Country Club, Stephanie Kusano, Brandon Davis, Blake Davis and Ashley Weinhold swept the following Super Champ titles in their respective age groups: Excellence, Corpus Christi SCMZ, Dallas SCMZ, and TGS.

With this firepower in our past, we look forward to charging the current and next crops of ATA tennis athletes to reach high for their tennis goals.

Happy New Year!!

Jack Newman

CEO

Austin Tennis Academy