Jacob Lagman is set to compete in the US next year.
(CDN PHOTO/CHRISTIAN MANINGO)
Jacob Lagman will go down in the annals of Cebu City tennis history as the first Cebuano player to have played in the NCAA Division I tennis tournament in the US.
Lagman, a former stalwart of the Sacred Heart School-Ateneo de Cebu, will achieve that feat on Jan. 19 next year when he suits up for the Saint Mary’s Gaels at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California.
Lagman is currently in Cebu City for the Christmas break but will return to the US on Jan. 4 to prepare for the upcoming NCAA tournament.
The NCAA Division I is where most varsity teams compete in the West Coast Conference.
In an interview yesterday at the Sandtrap Tennis Courts at the Banilad Sports Club Inc., Lagman expressed his desire to help improve the way tennis is being played by aspiring Cebuano tennis players.
Lagman said part of his goal is to put up a tennis academy in Cebu where deserving but less privileged aspirants will be given tennis scholarships.
“My primary goal as a tennis player is to improve my skills in the sport as well as to raise the level of competition here,” said Lagman, a freshman tennis varsity student taking up a BS Kinesiology course at the Saint Mary’s College of California in Moraga, California.
“Aside from that, my other major aims of why I’m in tennis is para makatabang pud ko sa mga less fortunate kids to get a tennis scholarship if ever our plans of building a tennis academy will be realized in the future,” he said.
And just to underscore his earnest desire to realize his dreams which started since he was still a six-year-old tennis player, Lagman has already outlined his future plans.
“After sa NCAA, I’m planning to join the professional circuit , first by joining the Future’s tournament, then the Challenger’s and on to the ATP tour for two years. After that, I’m planning to become an assistant coach in Europe so that I can gain the necessary experience on how to run a tennis academy,” said Lagman.
This early, Lagman’s father, Jess and his mother, Julie, said Jacob has already purchased a lot in Lilo-an town, northern Cebu which he intends to use for the planned tennis academy.
“I also trained under a French coach in Taiwan in June this year, and, in all the tennis academies I have attended including in Europe, I took notes of all the lessons so that I will know what area I need to improve my game on,” revealed the former age-group division’s multi-titled netter, Lagman.
Currently, Jacob is one of the three freshmen players of the Gaels tennis team for the 2014-2015 season. The other two newbies are 6-foot-1 Matthew Campana of Hillsborough, California (Serra) and 5-foot-10 Nash Vollenweider from Queensland, Australia.
Lagman’s other teammates under the tutelage of Gaels head coach Michael Wayman and assistant coach Simon Harston, are senior college student Samuel Bloore from New South Wales, Australia and junior college players Thomas Alexander Hunt from Nelson, New Zealand, James Markiewicz, from Osterode, Germany, Wil Martin from Westwood, California, Alec Wagner from Maui, Hawaii and Arthur Weber from Lunel, France.
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