Jayla Tran of Sanctuary Lakes Recreation Club is the 2013 MLC Tennis Hot Shot of the Year.<\/p>\n
The seven year-old was crowned the winner of the award at a special ceremony at the Melbourne Zoo last night. Jayla beat thousands of entries and 11 other nominees to win the award that recognises MLC Tennis Hot Shots players who best demonstrate the spirit of tennis through their participation, enthusiasm and enjoyment of the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was shocked. There were 11 other nominees and I can\u2019t believe how I got chosen,\u201d an excited Jayla said. \u201cIt means a lot to me and my family.\u201d The prize includes $5000 from MLC, a year\u2019s worth of free coaching and a private lesson with MLC Tennis Hot Shots ambassador Alicia Molik at her home club.<\/p>\n
Jayla, who lists Molik and Roger Federer as her favourite players, couldn\u2019t wipe the smile off her face after her win as she was joined by her emotional mother on stage to receive the award from Molik. \u201cWhen I was four I tried tennis for one year but then I wanted to try other sports. I didn\u2019t like any of the other sports so I went back to tennis and this is what happened,\u201d Jayla said.<\/p>\n
The August nominee has already made plans for what to do with her prize money, with a new tennis racquet near the top of her wishlist. \u201cI\u2019ll spend $1000 on tennis stuff then put half in my bank account, half in my brother\u2019s bank account,\u201d she said. Molik, a former top 10 player in both singles and doubles, said Jayla was a deserving winner. \u201cShe is a gorgeous girl and you could just see her eyes light up after her name was called out,\u201d she said. Molik said it was a special evening to be part of it. \u201cI love it because it involves the whole community. The decision for Jayla to win this award doesn\u2019t just impact her but also her family, friends, tennis club and community. Everyone gets a real buzz out of the fact that someone from their tennis club and their community has won a really big competition and hopefully it inspires the next generation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
All nominees for the 2013 MLC Tennis Hot Shot of the Year and their families were given behind-the-scene access at Melbourne Zoo and spent time feeding giraffes before the ceremony started. The nominees were then all introduced during the ceremony and got to ask Molik, the evening\u2019s special guest, questions on stage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jayla Tran of Sanctuary Lakes Recreation Club is the 2013 MLC Tennis Hot Shot of the Year. The seven year-old was crowned the winner of the award at a special ceremony at the Melbourne Zoo last night. Jayla beat thousands of entries and 11 other nominees to win the award that recognises MLC Tennis Hot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5907,"featured_media":11734,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5907"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}