Roy Encarnacion loves UCLA.
The 1995 graduate was here for the last basketball championship,
and has spent the moments since thinking of ways to get back to
UCLA.
“I didn’t want to leave,” Encarnacion said.
“I still think, “˜Can I get back to UCLA?’ For me,
it’s just being there. There’s always a buzz on campus.
Everyone here wants to be successful. People don’t get into
UCLA by accident, except in my case.”
Encarnacion soon found a way to come back. For the last seven
years, he has been the ball-kid coordinator for the Countrywide
Classic tennis tournament. Encarnacion, the owner of a real estate
development company, saw the job as not only an opportunity to give
back to the community, but also a chance to visit his old haunts
and old friends.
“It’s great because I get to see all my
friends,” Encarnacion said. “Just being here though
““ I get to walk by Pauley Pavilion and it just brings back
the nostalgia of my school years. It lets me realize how much
I’ve grown up, or not grown up at all in my case.”
As manager of the ball kids, it is Encarnacion’s
responsibility to make sure the kids are well-trained and naturally
talented enough to do the job quickly and well. With the recent
inclusion of Andy Roddick into the tournament field,
Encarnacion’s job has changed to include another factor:
safety.
“Roddick is going to be serving the ball at 140 to 150
miles per hour,” Encarnacion said. “So now I actually
have to think more as a parent than most parents ““ the
kids’ safety comes first.”
That is why one of the first things Encarnacion looks for in his
kids is agility. This year, for the first time, Encarnacion ran his
training sessions a little differently to get a better idea of
which kids would make the cut.
“This year, we ran sprint races to see how fast these kids
really are,” Encarnacion said. “After those, it’s
painfully obvious which kids can do the job.
“We also try to make sure we’ve got no prima
donnas.”
He has to deal with enough prima-donna behavior from the players
themselves. Andre Agassi has famously required ball kids to stand
motionless in their original positions when he is playing. With
these kind of sticklers to detail among the players, Encarnacion
sees one of his main jobs as teaching discipline.
“We’ve got to remember that this is a livelihood
(for the players),” he said. “We have to take this
seriously. So I try to teach the kids discipline and
accountability. I owe that to them.”
In the professionalism of the tournament, Encarnacion sees a lot
of the attitude of the surrounding environment.
“The folks at this association, from the ball kids to the
administration, really want to be successful,” Encarnacion
said. “I think it just breeds from the energy at this
school.”
That success comes at the price of a great deal of work.
Encarnacion typically does his last work on the tournament in
mid-August, but must begin thinking about the tournament again in
October. Still, he wouldn’t trade his time with the
tournament for anything.
“It’s just being able to see my friends,” he
said. “It is such a great place to be. I could never get
tired of UCLA.”