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Thursday, November 14, 2013

Catanzariti Commits to Texas A&M; NLI Roundup; Tennis and Wall Street; Virginia Tech Pair Hits with McEnroe

My fourth and final Tennis Recruiting Network 2014 commitment article features blue chip AJ Catanzariti of Pittsburgh, Pa. Catanzariti, who trains at the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, Md., will be playing for the Texas A&M Aggies next fall.

I've gathered up National Letter of Intent signing announcements from many major programs, (lots more will go up in the next week or two) and clicking on the school name will take you to the athletic website's release. If you know of other official announcements, please leave a link in the comments.

WOMEN:
Baylor: Kelley Anderson, Eliza Long
Cal: Lynn Hoang
Central Florida: Kennan Johnson, Mónica Matía
Clemson: Keisha Clousing
Florida: Brooke Austin, Josie Kuhlman, Peggy Porter
Florida State: Gabriella Castaneda
Georgia Tech: Alexis Prokopuik
Iowa: Adorabol Huckleby
Marshall: Madison Silver
TCU: Alexis Pereira
Texas Tech: Sarah Dvorak, Katelyn Jackson

MEN:
Cal: William Griffith, J.T. Nishimura
Florida: Jordan Belga, Oliver Landert, Chase Perez-Blanco
Georgia: Peter Bertran, Andy Martinez
Illinois: Aron Hiltzik
Louisville: Pally Ray
Minnesota: Felix Corwin
South Carolina: Harrison O'Keefe
Washington: Mitch Stewart, Jake Douglas

A few days ago, Business Insider published this fascinating and exhaustive list of 45 former junior and college tennis stars (it was 34, but they've added more, including two recent Virginia graduates) who have gone on to financial careers on Wall Street. I knew of a few of these, but was most intrigued by the account of two-time Kalamazoo champion Rudy Rake becoming one of Morgan Stanley's youngest managing directors. Rake turned pro before attending college, but obviously thrived academically at the University of Miami after a brief time on the tour.

I'd be fascinated to see a similar article about former golf stars on Wall Street, to see if this is a sport-specific phenomenon.



I was hoping John McEnroe might come to the National Indoor for the finals to see Jamie Loeb, who trains at this academy in New York (brother Patrick was there). He did not, but John McEnroe did connect with two Virginia Tech doubles players Amerigo Contini and Andreas Bjerrehus, in New York for the tournament, who went to him.  Virginia Tech assistant Stephen Huss, ranked as high as 21 in the world in doubles, arranged it, and it's obvious from this Richmond Times-Dispatch account of their hitting session that the competitive fire in McEnroe still burns as brightly as ever.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

They may have listed 45 guys (well 44 guys and one girl) but the list is certainly not exhaustive. There are literally hundreds of people who played top level college tennis working in finance. A few big ones they missed where Alex Kim (Stanford, WR 106) who has worked in finance since 2004, Jeff Morrison (Florida, WR 85) who went to UBS post graduation I believe, and Alex Clayton (Stanford, NCAA #2) who decided against giving the pros a shot and went straight to Goldman Sachs.

Unknown said...

Post graduation should obviously read post retirement...

R Baby Foundation said...

Special shout out to many of the tennis player that were featured in the Business Insider who played the 2013 New York Tennis Tournament
for R Baby Foundation.
http://www.rbabyfoundation.org/events.php

Over $300,000 was raised in a competitive tennis tournament and used for saving babies lives through improving pediatric emergency care.
It was a generous group of tennis players with all of the winnings donated back to the charity!

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-13/scene-last-night-icahn-ackman-bruce-richards-steinem.html

Please come out and cheer at our
4th Annual 2014 New York Tennis Tournament for R Baby Foundation this upcoming May!

itsnotjusttennis said...

Based on my calculations 28 out of 45 of these players all went to one of the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. I included all Ivy League schools, Stanford, Duke, MIT, London School of Economics, Berkeley, and Virginia to come up with that upper echelon. Based on that figure, we can't say its tennis that gets these people their jobs, its their smarts. Companies like hiring student-athletes in general because they have the skills necessary to be successful in business i.e. teamwork, time management, and the willingness to work hard.

Clark Coleman said...

Doug Stewart, former Virginia #1 (and former boys finalist at Kalamazoo) is working on Wall Street. He received a B.S. in Systems Engineering at UVa, as I recall.