What does it take as a parent to raise two tennis and swimming champions?

This is our story. 

My first child's is my daughter Izzy, and at 4 years old I decided to teach her not to swim but to dive down to the bottom of the pool and pick up toys. That way she would get comfortable in the water and learn how to hold her breath properly. Then, we hired a coach to teach her how to properly swim. 

Not sure if it was the first or the second session, he looked at her and said what?? He then called the swimming head coach of the club team to see her swimming. They were stunned. The head coach told me immediately if my daughter could join the swimming team. I said offcourse. 2 more swimmers joined and began the most remarkable story of 3 girls breaking records everywhere. 

Swimming for those that don't know is the most brutal and physically demanding sport in the world. Rowing may come close, but at a competitive level and an olympic level I see them as ALIENS, because the commitment, discipline and sacrifice they have to show every single day of practice and competitions is unbelievable. 

Many kids quit somewhere in their career. This is because the WHY is not clear to them. So at age 10 I told my daughter that she was busting her butt swimming because one day she would go and swim for Stanford University in California. This prevented her from a quitting mentality. 

She won so many competitions I lost track, but I remember Junior Olympics Championships finals  on 200 back that she did want to scratch, as she was exhausted because she won all her previous events,  but the coaches said no, you have to swim. I keep that video as a treasure because she obliterated everyone in that final and won gold. 

Swimming is very hard, and going into competitions you hope to maybe be in the first 3 on a single event. In Delaware or Pennsylvania, there was this huge meet, my daughter won some events, and we were tired, and ready to leave and drive back, but the coaches saw us and said don’t go, wait a little, not sure we waited, after the awards to all individual champions, they called my daughter, she won the High Point Award, which is the hardest thing to do in swimming, this means she earned the most points of any swimmer on the entire competition. It's hard to explain this, but that was the first time in the history of her swimming club that anyone achieved such a feat. 

Then, at the Summer Championships division I in NY,  she pulled the team to 8 consecutive championship winning years at number 1, her division I, and all stars competition, the best of all divisions. 

She took her high school to the States competition  3 years in a row. 

She graduated high school and a university invited her to join their Olympic Team. Olympic swimmers always chose something easy to study. Not my daughter, she chose the hardest possible engineering. Computer Science. I told her it was ok to switch if it was too much, and indeed, she changed to FinTech, another tough major. 

I said to my daughter, swimming for the USA is going to be almost impossible in the Olympics because everybody else is 5 seconds faster than you , so I recommended that she register to swim in the Olympics for Colombia. After all kinds of obstacles, she finally made it to Inter leagues nationals and won her events, a requirement to go to nationals. Next year she went to nationals, but again, officials did not want to let her swim. Coaches fought with everything, and finally officials let her swim but no medals if she wins. I said, I DO NOT CARE, just let her swim!. So , not only did she win all kinds of gold, silver, and bronze medals, but she broke the actual national record in 50 back, becoming the fastest ever in that event. 

Now Back to  Tennis. 

My son always loved his sister and everything she did. So naturally he started swimming. 

As I said before, swimming at a competitive level is brutal. So at 14 years old, and tired of swimming he tells me he wants to switch to tennis and if I could help him with training and strategy. I said sure. I was ecstatic. I have been a tennis player since I was 6 years old. 

He has played tennis since 3 years old, holding the racquet with two hands on both sides, because the racquet was bigger than him. He did not play constantly but had an idea, and coaches would always try to take away the two handed forehand, which he hated all the time. 

First thing we did was to travel to Virginia , and meet with the Tennis Director, and ask him how he chose tennis players for his team. Jim said easy, UTR 10 or above. That is professional level players ladies and gentlemen. 

We went back to New York, and started asking all coaches if we can get to UTR 10 in 4 short years, and the answer from all of them was unanimous, it is IMPOSSIBLE to do that. Kids playing all their life may get to 5-6 , and I know of only one player in NY state at 18 years that achieved UTR 10 playing constantly. But THAT was not the answer I wanted, so eventually we landed at the McEnroe Academy in Eastchester, sat down with Alberto, Tennis Director, and he told me that IF my son had this huge hunger, the incredible drive, and I had the money, it was not impossible. Not only that, but he gives me the entire plan, how it may be done week after week. I turned to my son, and said, do you want it? Are you ready? And he said YES DAD. 

So we embarked on the craziest tennis project ever attempted in NY to convert my swimmer son at 14 years old  in 4 short years into a tennis machine. Now, this project ended up not being about winning, because winning in my mind is good for motivation and keeps you going, but it actually does not teach anything of great value. Losing on the other hand, that's the real teacher. So my son and I had to overcome all kinds of obstacles, especially changing his style of play. The first year he won his high school division. In the second year, some Tennis Pros from Brazil came, played with him, and said to my son, you play beautifully, BUT, a two handed forehand is a disadvantage, as you will always take a fraction of a second more to get to the ball. You should change it. Amazingly my son agreed. I took him to the tennis academy to watch a kid, who played only with coaches, and displayed an amazing one handed forehand, and I said to him, –that’s what you need to develop, the same or better. But, we did not know how hard that was going to be. It took one full year to be consistent. Then, injuries, not enough tournaments, no guarantee you could play, you name it, we faced it. He learned an amazing forehand but it was way too powerful, without control, I said to him you won't win matches that way. You have to find the balance between power and control. Well, he did it. 

In the 4th year, he played in two of the most elite academies in NY, Armonk, and WTA. He did not get to UTR 10. He got to UTR 8 in the eyes of his coaches. His coach begged us to let him train professionally because unlike the other kids, Tennis does not make you an athlete, but you have to be a real athlete to play professional tennis, and it happens to be that my son used to be a swimmer (The Very definition of an athlete) , which put him in that athlete category were the coaches would say to me that he moved on the court like a gazelle (2nd fastest animal on the planet) , but my son was clear that he wanted to go to college and play. Funny thing, tennis did not really make a difference when entering College, because his university accepted him without even a tennis team because of Covid. But all the effort and money was absolutely worth it only by watching his drive and hunger develop up to the moon and wanting to go to college in business and leadership no matter what. Sports for us always come second. And we are not sure if this 4 year record is NY, or the entire US, because we could not find anyone doing the same ever. 

Anecdotal Evidence and Case Studies

While there may not be documented "official records" of this exact progression, discussions on tennis forums (like those on Reddit and other sites) indicate that a jump from a UTR of 0 to a UTR of 6 in a few years is considered an impressive and achievable goal for a dedicated late-starter. Reaching a UTR of 8, however, is a much higher bar.

In short, it would be an incredible and almost unheard-of accomplishment. It would require a unique confluence of athletic talent, obsessive dedication, access to top-tier coaching, and a large number of competitive matches. For most players, a four-year window is simply not enough to close the gap with those who have been playing since childhood.

This is our story and I hope it helps new parents how to navigate this incredible effort. I wrote a book called All on Sports, available for download,  that talks about many mistakes parents commit and more teachings and obstacles in competitive sports in New York. Many parents find this information very valuable as it can be the difference of tremendous joy or heavy devastation if the child has to quit because of  a serious injury that they could not overcome.  Enjoy. 

Leonardo Mora

CEO of Vision

GAWK Corporation