All around the world we can find optimal locations for young tennis players to grow and learn the game, but the Big Island is not, by anyone’s definition, one of those places.
Martina Navratilova and Martina Hingis both became world champions after growing up in Czechoslovakia, Justin Henin was from Belgium, and you find throughout Europe and eastern Europe, tennis is a much more widespread sport in terms of popularity than it ever has been in the United States.
That’s not to say that our country is bereft of tennis hotspots, quite the opposite, in fact. In South Florida, where Chris Evert grew up in Ft. Lauderdale, or in Southern California, where Serena and Venus Williams were raised under the aggressive tutelage of their father and other youth coaches, the game can take over communities.
But we are the only country that is obsessed with football, at all levels of school and as a professional game that swamps every other sport globally as far as revenues fire-hosed into franchises, colleges and some high schools.
Tennis players are on their own in most places, but if you happen to grow up on the mainland, especially in a place like California, you don’t have to seek tennis coaches, they are everywhere. There are certain courts in certain parts of Los Angeles where a youth tennis player hitting balls against a wall might be seen by a college recruiter who just happened to be there.
“It’s a different world for these kids,” said Bill Brilhante, the Waiakea High School coach who is currently supporting theHawaii-Pacific Sectional team under coach Fumiya Nakano in the Junior Federation Cup Nationals at Claremont, Calif. “Exposure (in Hilo), is nothing like it is in most parts of California, it’s just nothing like it.
“Over here, young players have national-level tournaments they can play in on a monthly basis, if they qualify, against some of the best age-group competition in the country. For us, our kids may get to the mainland to compete in one of those kind of tournaments maybe twice over the summer.
“It’s a major difference,” he said.
But there he is, coaching one of 17 sections in the Federation Cup, with six players that will compete in singles and three doubles competition, and that last part is where the three Big Island players may have an opening.
Keilyn Kunimoto, Maile Brilhante and Kianna Oda, all rising seniors at Waiakea, make up half of the six-member team, and they have all played a lot of doubles together, a part of the game that can sometimes be overlooked by even the top junior players.
“They perform well together,” Brilhante said. “They have devoted time to it, and you find a lot of top players at this age group tend to concentrate on singles — refining and improving as much as they can — but they often don’t give the same attention to doubles play.
“Our girls are good doubles players, and this tournament is college rules (six singles matches, three doubles matches), and those doubles? You get a point for that just like you get a point for singles, so we’re excited to see what they can do.”
There may be a sense that this is a little like the difference between swimming at Richardson’s Beach and swimming in a shark tank, just based on the long odds the Big Island players face against the large contingent of well-schooled California players.
Maile Brilhante said she has been going to California for tournament play for the last five years, “but it’s usually been one trip,” she said, “so we don’t have the same familiarity, I guess you could say, with playing in these tournaments.
“It’s a pretty big deal,” she said, but having already accepted a scholarship to the University of Pacific in Stockton, Calif., some of that pressure is reduced. “I’m really glad I have (the scholarship), because I’d probably be feeling a lot more pressure if I didn’t have it, but there are going to be a lot of people there watching, and we’re representing this section of the country, so this is pretty important, it’s just a different kind of pressure.”
Despite the geographic disadvantage, Oda is using it as a mental advantage, as best as she can. Like Brilhante, Oda started playing at age 7 and knows all about the concentration of players on the mainland.
“They have so many more opportunities to be seen and evaluated (in California), that it’s a pretty big advantage. They might have an off day someone sees, but they can come back and play well and show how they improve, where we don’t get all those opportunities.
“But for me, I just use it as motivation,” she said. “I make myself work harder, go hit if I don’t feel like it, that sort of thing.”
This will be the third year in a row she has played in the “Zonals” tournament, and Oda can feel the difference.
“I’m really excited about this,” she said, “I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited about a tournament, I’m just trying to stay focused.”
Kunimoto got an earlier start than her two Hawaii-Pacific Zone teammates, thanks to her uncle Randy, a tennis coach.
“I was 4-years-old,” she said, “and it was just one day he said, ‘Hey, here’s a racket, let’s go hit,’ and that’s how I started.”
She will admit that it wasn’t a matter of tennis consuming her life from that day forward. Instead, “I just played for fun, no big thing,” she said, “but even doing that, you pick up little things. It wasn’t until I started in tournaments that I got serious about it, but It’s been pretty serious now for a while.”
During this tournament and the Billie Jean King Hardcourt National Aug. 4-10, these three Hilo teenagers will be watched by hundreds of college recruiters on an almost daily basis. They all send highlight clips to schools they would like to attend, but college tennis coaches get highlight videos every day.
“It’s something you have to do,” Brilhante said, “but it’s just a knock on the door, really.
“There will be a lot of people out to see how they play in competition against top Level 1 players in the country. Can they compete? What you do in these two tournaments is going to, in all likelihood, determine their choice of college, their coaches and, to a large extent, their futures in tennis.”
There are no bright lights or a red velvet curtain, but in every other sense, the three Waiakea players will be on stage before critical eyes, every bit as meaningful to them as opening night on Broadway.
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Editor’s note: This story has modified to reflect that Fumiya Nakano is the coach of the Hawaii-Pacific Sectional team.