KIRKLAND — For the time being, Jacqueline Cako is still what her coach Russ Bucklin calls “the best kept tennis secret in the Pacific Northwest.”
But expect that to change if Cako, as expected, continues to win.
The Brier girl, who just turned 17, is ranked fourth nationally by the United States Tennis Association for girls in the 17 and 18 age group. She is also ranked No. 67 in the world junior rankings (all ages) by the International Tennis Federation.
Cako is already competing and winning at the pro level, though she is still an amateur. Last month she won a $10,000 USTA Pro Circuit event in Southlake, Texas, beating Ashley Weinhold, the 2007 USTA Girls 18 hard-court national champion, in the final. Cako also reached the semis of a similar pro event in Wichita, Kan., in June, and earlier this month she won an International Tennis Federation Grade 2 international 18-and-under event in Lexington, S.C.
She is, Bucklin said, the most promising girl tennis player out of the Northwest in the last several years. And the exciting thing, he added, is that she’s never stopped getting better.
“Everybody tops out eventually,” he said, “and who knows where she’ll top out. It could be No. 1 (in the world), it could be No. 10, it could be No. 30, and any one of those isn’t bad. She could also top out at No. 110. So until you get there, you don’t know the way things are going to go.
“But she’s gone past everything I would have predicted for her at
this stage (in her development). She’s blown all of that completely out of the water. So she’s achieved everything that we talked about and a great deal more, and she’s done it in less time.”
Cako has “a great body for the game,” he went on. “She has the perfect height (5-foot-101/2) with broad shoulders, long arms and good speed. And mentally she sees the game very well.”
Add to those attributes a fierce competitiveness — “There’s nobody who’s less afraid of a battle than she is,” Bucklin said — and, well, her potential is vast and bright.
Cako, who took up tennis when she was 8, saw her game begin to blossom when she hooked up with Bucklin about three years ago. At the outset she announced her goal was to play professionally, and from there the two began an intense program of training and high-level competition.
The regimen involves playing tennis virtually every day, and usually for several hours. Her workouts can be in the morning, afternoon and evening — and sometimes all three — and include one-on-one work with Bucklin, practice matches against top area players (often men), and non-tennis fitness training.
It’s a truly rigorous schedule, but one Cako embraces because “I want to be playing on the pro tour,” she said.
A few years ago Cako attended Bothell’s Inglemoor High School for half-days, but now she is home-schooled while also taking Running Start classes at Bothell’s Cascadia Community College. In addition to being a tennis whiz, she is an excellent student, and along with her tennis dreams she hopes to attend medical school somewhere down the road.
Home-schooling gives Cako the schedule flexibility she needs for training and traveling. She was at a tournament in San Diego last week, and in October she was away from home for three weeks.
She’s taking a different path from her childhood friends, “but I never really minded that,” Cako said. “I love seeing new places all the time and just going all over. I’ve always loved to travel, and now I’m getting to travel and play tennis. So there’s not much that could be better.
“I just love what I’m doing right now, and I hope to continue what I’m doing,” she said.
The payoff for her effort and dedication has been a remarkable rise in tennis. One that has surprised Bucklin and astonished her parents.
“We never expected she would be competing on this kind of level,” said Eva Cako, her mother. “It’s hard to believe, that this is something our child could accomplish. But everything came from her. (It was) her attitude, her desire, everything.”
There have been tremendous family sacrifices, of course, beginning with an obvious financial outlay. Also, Eva Cako and her husband have seen their daughter trade typical teenager pastimes — “No movies, no mall,” said her mother — for a lifestyle that has her on the road almost as much as she is home.
“But this was her decision and we’re supporting her,” Eva Cako said. “It’s whatever she decides. If she decides to quit tomorrow, we will support that as well. But she wants to see how far she can go, and we are just supporting her and helping her so she can see how far she can go.”
In the coming months, Cako will decide whether to turn pro or go to college after she finishes high school. If she opts for the latter, “any school would be delighted to sign her for a scholarship,” Bucklin said.
But if Cako continues to progress, and if the opportunity is there to make enough immediate money to match or exceed the value of a scholarship, she will likely turn pro. That, after all, is the ultimate goal.
“Predicting potential is difficult,” Bucklin acknowledged. “So with that disclaimer, I’d say that every three months I have to up my guess. In the beginning I would have said, ‘If she can make the top 125 (in the world) and play for five years on the pro tour and break even (financially), that’s really good.’ But then she starting blowing up the junior (international) rankings and we thought, ‘Well, maybe she can make it inside the top 100.” But right now she’s already playing pretty close to even with the top 100 players.
“So what I think now is that she’s going to make the top 50,” he said. “And I think she’s going to hang there for a while.”
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