She’s goin’ for the gold…oops! I mean copper…
By Kaja Banas  January 2005

Julia Baltas, the 13 year old team Agassi member, went down to the 2005 Copper Bowl in Tucson, Arizona as the 8th seed. She wasn’t expected to do so well, however. Her dad told her to go down the Copper Bowl and learn, he told her she didn’t even have to win. Wise words from a tennis dad who didn’t even push Julia to start playing tennis. “When Julia was five or six I was playing with a friend and after I was done playing she wanted to play and she hit the ball. So I went ahead and gave her the racket. My friend and I fed her some balls for ten minutes, she was happy. She hit balls here, she hit balls there, she hit balls over the fence, she didn’t care. A week later she did the same thing.
 

“I was with a friend at the mall and she had a daughter two or three years older than Julia. She also had her nieces and a few nephews, so about seven kids roughly ages six to ten and they were playing and running around and Julia tired them all out. “After that I was thinking of what type of sport or activity I could put her into and I thought about how she was in good shape. I remembered she tired the kids out so I put her into tennis through the Clark County Parks and Recreation program. Her first coach was Leon Vernon and her first tennis team was the Desert Tortoises.”
 

Well, getting back to the present tense, he told her that she should learn and didn’t have to win. She must have heard him wrong. She not only learned immeasurable amounts about her game and how to play but she also won the whole tournament in the girls 14 division!Most would think her toughest match was the final, that she that she had to of been in the zone. Wrong. “Rebecca Marino was my toughest match. I won 6-2, 6-1. And I lost to her the last time I played her,” said the ecstatic Julia as I interviewed her right after she arrived home to Vegas. “With Rebecca I was in the zone.” And in the zone she was. Rebecca Marino is one of the top players in Canada.Julia’s coach was heard saying it was the best match he had ever seen a Team Agassi kid play. With her confidence sky-high, Julia might just turn out to be the top player in Vegas.

Kaja Banas is a girls 16 player in the Nevada District, Intermountain Section. She is a reporter for VegasTennis.com.