In the midst of his second spring season with Illinois men’s tennis, sophomore Kenta Miyoshi has already secured many impressive accomplishments. Most recently, Miyoshi won the Milwaukee Tennis Classic’s singles draw in September. The 6-2, 5-7, 6-3 victory over Denver’s Daniel Sancho Arbizu clinched Miyoshi a spot in the ITA Fall National Championships. Just qualifying for the competition was a feat only senior Hunter Heck and junior Karlis Ozolins could boast.
With experience living and playing in Japan, New York and now Illinois, Miyoshi goes through his background in playing tennis and what brought him to where he is today. Like many students at Illinois, Miyoshi strives for his best in academics and works hard both on and off the court.
Miyoshi is a business student currently majoring in strategy, innovation and entrepreneurship. At the end of the first semester, Miyoshi gave an overall summary of how he felt in both tennis and school.
“I think I showed that I can beat good players,” Miyoshi said. “Tennis-wise, I’ve been doing good so far. It wasn’t a really tough semester for me since it was, like, basic business classes and gen-ed courses, so overall, it was a pretty good semester for me.”
It’s not a surprise that Miyoshi started tennis at such a young age. At just five or six years old, Miyoshi had already been introduced to the sport because his mom played tennis when they lived in New York.
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“I played a bunch of other sports, but I chose to play tennis when I went back to Japan when I was 10,” Miyoshi said.
Miyoshi also played soccer, baseball, flag football, basketball and swimming from the ages of 3 to 10 while growing up in New York. Along with this variety of sports, he made time for the piano as well. Miyoshi was naturally drawn to athletics but ultimately chose to devote most of his time to tennis.
Miyoshi was most drawn to tennis because he liked the fact he could play as an individual. He thought the process of building up your points throughout the match using strategy was intriguing.
“When I moved back to Japan, I don’t think it affected me a lot,” Miyoshi said.
Miyoshi considers himself an extrovert, so he feels comfortable adapting to situations and talking to new people. Of all the places that wanted Miyoshi’s talents to help their program, it was Illinois’ coaching staff and community that attracted him the most — making Illinois an easy decision.
“The biggest reason is that I trusted (head coach) Brad (Dancer),” Miyoshi said. “He had a lot of energy and enthusiasm to make me a great tennis player in the future and the environment here was awesome. I thought that they had many resources which will help me to improve my tennis and also, academically, it’s a top school in the country too.”
With the spring season coming up, Miyoshi’s confidence is unwavering. The Illini have the fortune of very little roster turnover compared to last season and building on that familiar foundation excites Miyoshi.
“I feel pretty confident right now since we have basically the same team as last year,” Miyoshi said. “I think we built a good culture from last season and we learned a lot of things which will help us to compete in January.”
