Maryville Ten­nis: From Mon­tene­gro to the USA

Mario Alek­sic is a fresh­man and a fu­ture ten­nis star for Maryville Uni­ver­sity. He is also a brother of a pre­vi­ous ten­nis star, Bodin Alek­sic that has grad­u­ated from Maryville last year. 

Alek­sic trav­eled all the way from Mon­tene­gro which is lo­cated in the west-cen­tral Balkans. It is bor­dered by the Adri­atic Sea and Croa­tia, Bosnia, Ser­bia, Kosovo, and Al­ba­nia. The fresh­man Ten­nis player is hop­ing to gain good ex­pe­ri­ence on and off the field dur­ing his stay at Maryville Uni­ver­sity.

Alek­sic says he loves every­thing about the game.

He said “Con­sid­er­ing that ten­nis is an in­di­vid­ual sport, my fa­vorite as­pect is that I am part of the team here.”

Alek­sic talks about how be­ing fo­cus is a big part of be­ing a ten­nis player, hav­ing to fo­cus through a long pe­riod of time dur­ing a game can be chal­leng­ing and re­ally tir­ing men­tally.

Alek­sic also talks about how to han­dle pres­sure when play­ing, he says, “there are dif­fer­ent kinds of pres­sures. Pres­sure in the big points I like a lot be­cause I en­joy the adren­a­line. The pres­sure of the match that I’m ex­pected to win eas­ily is the one I don’t like. I try just to be fo­cus and to give my­self more mo­ti­va­tion with some smaller goals.”

Alek­sic has a tremen­dous mo­ti­va­tion, es­pe­cially to be able to rep­re­sent his coun­try wher­ever he goes in the world. Alek­sic has been a mem­ber of a Davis Cup team of Mon­tene­gro which is an In­ter­na­tional team event in Ten­nis that is run by the In­ter­na­tional Ten­nis Fed­er­a­tion. It is also con­sid­ered on of the biggest ten­nis events on an in­ter­na­tional level.

 Alek­sic gave some ad­vice to younger play­ers that are seek­ing for an op­por­tu­nity to play col­lege ten­nis, he said, “This is an amaz­ing op­por­tu­nity to get a nice ed­u­ca­tion and still com­pete at a very high level.”

Lastly, Alek­sic men­tioned that he will def­i­nitely con­tinue to com­pete af­ter he fin­ishes col­lege.