For six years, Raymond Ajoc lived about 100 steps away from a tennis court. But, for the six years before high school, he had never used it.
It was his freshman year of high school and he had recently seen Rafael Nadal win the French Open with a gritty playing style that defied Ajoc’s preconceived notion of tennis as a “sissy sport.”
So he and his brother made the 100-step walk one day. Then again. And again.
“It was one of those things where when I started playing, I just fell in love with it and me and my brother would just play every day,” Ajoc said. “I would push him to go, he didn’t really want to go out as much as I did. I think I got better pretty quickly because I actually wanted to get better, I wanted to play on the varsity team.”
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Now, Ajoc remains with the sport of tennis through his role as the team manager of the UCLA’s men’s team, providing services such as stringing the players’ rackets whether at games played at the Los Angeles Tennis Center or on another school’s courts.
The journey to his role as team manager started back in his freshman year of high school, stretching way beyond that 100-step trip with his brother.
Ajoc would get his first taste of team tennis that same year he first picked up a racket, making the varsity team at Richard Gahr High School in Cerritos in the spring of his freshman year.
During Ajoc’s sophomore year, he received a stroke of luck. Former pro player Joseph Lizardo, who had run a successful tennis academy in Baltimore, moved to Cerritos to establish a new version of the Lizardo Tennis Academy.
After Ajoc began training at the academy, Lizardo soon hired Ajoc to work at the academy’s pro shop, where he started to learn to juggle responsibilities the way he would someday do as a team manager.
When he was a senior, Ajoc was named team captain of his high school team and played No. 1 singles. After he was accepted to UCLA, a co-worker from the academy introduced him to assistant coach Grant Chen, who at the time was serving as the team’s Director of Operations.
“I met him and my feedback was very positive from the beginning,” Chen said. “I just had a gut instinct.”
That summer, Ajoc helped Chen and coach Billy Martin with youth tennis camps. After impressing the pair over the summer, Ajoc was named team manager at the start of his freshman year.
By his sophomore year, he was put on a full scholarship.
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Raymond Ajoc had trouble on his first day on the job.
Just about four years after he first picked up a tennis racket as a freshman in high school, Ajoc found a job as a UCLA men’s tennis team manager.
He had spent the day at the Los Angeles Tennis Center trying to learn how to string a racket. His parents were on their way to pick him up and he hadn’t even finished a single racket.
“I almost decided not to do it, it was really stressful,” Ajoc said.
Ajoc learned quickly, though, soon finishing rackets within an hour. Then within 20 minutes. Today, in his fourth year as the team manager, he’s down to 12 minutes per racket.
“Ray’s as efficient as it gets,” said senior co-captain Dennis Mkrtchian. “He knows by memory what each guy likes for their strings.”
Chen to string rackets when he was the team manager but he has happily relinquished the responsibility to Ajoc.
“That’s really his domain. To be honest, it’s come to the point where I don’t need to worry about that aspect at all, I know it’s taken care of,” Chen said. “And there’s so many facets of being a coach and so many things you have to oversee and make sure are done, and that’s one thing I can promise you I don’t worry about at all.”
Ajoc, a fourth-year biology student, doesn’t just string rackets. He manages the team’s Twitter account, arranges travel logistics and takes care of whatever the coaches and players need, from new equipment to makeshift meteorological devices.
“(Coach) Billy (Martin) is a creature of habit. After my first year working with him, I knew exactly what he needed before he’d ask,” Ajoc said. “Like if we go to Stanford, when we warm up, he likes to put this pre-wrap tape up on this flagpole they have so he can see which way the wind is going. So when we get to Stanford, that’s the first thing I do.”
It’s the type of behind-the-scenes task that makes those in the tennis program rave about him.
“He’s an absolute hidden asset to our program,” Chen said. “He’s one of those guys who doesn’t want any attention, doesn’t want the spotlight, doesn’t need any credit, but yet is absolutely vital in our program. Those characters, those people like that, are very rare. They’re hard to come by.”
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Hot tea in one hand, honey in the other and three lozenges in his throat.
That’s how Ajoc watched the Bruins lose the national championship to Virginia two years ago.
“My voice was gone from screaming and cheering all week,” Ajoc said.
He said when he went to the NCAA championships his freshman year, he woke up one day and couldn’t speak. Although he’s become more selective with his cheering since then, he is still a “hardcore supporter,” as Mkrtchian puts it.
“He has some funny lines,” Mkrtchian said. “He knows what to say during a match – to be funny, to cheer you up, to get you motivated, to pump you up – whatever it takes, he knows what to do.”
Mkrtchian said he counts Ajoc as one of his teammates.
“He’s part of the team when it comes down to it,” Mkrtchian said. “And more than just tennis manager, he’s a friend, he ties the team together.”