{"id":25758,"date":"2021-06-02T15:55:13","date_gmt":"2021-06-02T05:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/?p=25758"},"modified":"2021-06-02T15:57:54","modified_gmt":"2021-06-02T05:57:54","slug":"roll-tide-enzo%e2%80%afaguiard%e2%80%afjoins%e2%80%afthe-university-of-alabama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/news\/2021\/06\/02\/roll-tide-enzo%e2%80%afaguiard%e2%80%afjoins%e2%80%afthe-university-of-alabama","title":{"rendered":"ROLL TIDE! Enzo\u202fAguiard\u202fjoins\u202fthe University of Alabama"},"content":{"rendered":"

18-year-old\u00a0Victorian,\u00a0Enzo\u00a0Aguiard\u00a0is ready to play at the University of Alabama.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After\u00a0verbally committing to the Crimson Tide and\u00a0signing in November 2020,\u00a0Aguiard\u00a0will\u00a0make the\u00a015,288 km journey\u00a0to the United States\u00a0in June to join his\u00a0new\u00a0teammates in Tuscaloosa.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Aguiard\u00a0has had a long affiliation with Tennis in Victoria, dating back to when he was four years old.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy Dad got me into Tennis\u00a0when I was\u00a0four\u00a0years old, he brought me to the local park and there was a wall\u00a0–\u00a0I used to hit on the wall before I joined\u00a0Royal\u00a0Park\u00a0Tennis\u00a0Club, which was a\u00a0five\u00a0minute\u00a0bike\u00a0ride from my\u00a0house.\u201d<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Following a\u00a0great\u00a0junior career and recently playing Tennis Victoria Pennant\u00a0at Royal South\u00a0Yarra\u00a0Tennis Club,\u00a0like many Victorians,\u00a0Aguiard\u00a0made the decision to take the College pathway\u00a0to\u00a0further develop his career on and off the court.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s when the University of Alabama reached out.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey messaged me one morning on Instagram but after that we got in touch. I sent them film of\u00a0my\u00a0matches before\u00a0COVID\u00a0started and then they assessed me on that.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was having really good conversations with the coaches before signing, Alabama\u00a0(Men\u2019s Tennis Coaches)\u00a0and my coach\u00a0(Michael\u00a0Logarzo)\u00a0were on the same page in terms of what my improvements needed\u00a0to be and combining this with being in the SEC (South Eastern\u00a0Conference) which is really strong and known to be good for most sports, Alabama\u00a0was the best option for me.\u201d<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Aguiard\u00a0also found it helpful when making his decision to reach out to fellow Victorians who\u00a0have\u00a0already\u00a0taken the\u00a0College\u00a0Tennis route, including Jeremy Taylor (University of Memphis) and Campbell Salmon (Rice University).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Enzo Aguiard at the Victorian Claycourt Championships – April 2021<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

Having an interest in many sports,\u00a0Aguiard\u00a0is excited to be a student-athlete amongst other successful university teams\u00a0playing in the SEC\u00a0from the\u00a0Alabama\u00a0Crimson Tide.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The university featured on a national scale in the United States across\u00a0the\u00a0last 12 months,\u00a0with\u00a0the basketball team qualifying for the\u00a0NCAA\u00a0(National Collegiate Athletic Association)\u00a0March Madness Tournament and the\u00a0successful\u00a0and\u00a0highly-profiled\u00a0football team\u00a0won the\u00a0National Championship\u00a0last January.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a great challenge. There\u2019s going to be a bit more pressure with all the other sports that are used to performing well and I\u2019ll try and bring that same energy and have a successful tennis team like the basketball and football programs.\u201d<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve watched a few of their (Men\u2019s Tennis Team) matches live, they had some good wins against Ole Miss\u00a0(University)\u00a0and Mississippi State\u00a0(University). All the teams want to win and get as high as they can in the rankings and I\u2019m looking forward to that.\u201d<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As part of being a student-athlete,\u00a0Aguiard\u00a0will also take classes amongst his training workload with the goal of\u00a0earning\u00a0a qualification\u00a0at the end of his\u00a0College\u00a0experience.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve chosen to study Management Information\u00a0Systems\u00a0but the\u00a0school has\u00a0said the first two years are general classes, so if I\u2019m leaning towards a different major I can\u00a0change, or\u00a0keep the one I\u2019ve chosen.\u201d<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Like\u00a0throughout\u00a0the recruitment phase, the University of Alabama has been checking in on\u00a0Aguiard\u00a0and\u00a0his teammates\u00a0and\u00a0bringing\u00a0the\u00a0Men\u2019s Tennis team together despite being on opposite sides of the globe.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a few zoom calls with all the other freshman which has been great to get to know the other players that are going to be with me for the next four or so years.\u201d<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe often message as well, about how\u00a0tournaments\u00a0are going, we try and keep contact every week to see how they\u2019re going and how I\u2019m going.\u201d<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Aguiard\u00a0and his teammates\u00a0will have another\u00a0challenge\u00a0ahead –\u00a0the\u00a0current pandemic\u00a0and how\u00a0the University\u00a0of Alabama\u00a0transitions their international players into\u00a0Tuscaloosa.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe\u00a0coaches have\u00a0said it\u2019s\u00a0(the pandemic)\u00a0still quite bad over in the States,\u00a0but Tuscaloosa is a small country town with mostly students, we still have to do weekly swab testing and do a week\u2019s quarantine\u00a0when we get there.\u201d<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019ll be the first time that\u00a0Aguiard\u00a0has been to\u00a0America and\u00a0is ready to make the journey across the Pacific Ocean.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m pretty excited to get over there to see the cultural differences between Australia and America. I\u2019ve heard the population is about 100,000 people so it\u2019s\u00a0similar to\u00a0Bendigo.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnd\u00a0I\u2019ve heard the people are nice too!\u201d<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

*Photo Credit: University of Alabama Men’s Tennis<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Victorian,\u00a0Enzo\u00a0Aguiard\u00a0is ready to make the 15,000km journey to play at the University of Alabama in 2021<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6293,"featured_media":25760,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25758","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\/25758","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\/6293"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/vic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}