Arnav Murarka (‘24) plays tennis for Amador Valley High School and in his free time he decided to give back what his coaches gave him. He created a business called JuniorAces Tennis which is a tennis class marketed towards those from seven to thirteen years old around the Tri Valley.

Murarka holds tennis classes with Shival Shah, a student at Foothill High School. They train at the Muirwood Community Park over by Foothill road. Classes usually run for around three days a week in the mornings from 9:00-10:30 a.m on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

“Usually we start off with everyone getting stretched out and we go into some basic drills. Toward the middle section of the class [we practice] forehands and backhands. Later on in the summer, we start teaching them serves and volleys, nothing too advanced for them because they are still learning.Then, towards the end of the class we always play a bunch of games just for fun,” said Murarka.

The classes are open to people of all levels of tennis expertise with most people being beginners. The matches they play have been modified in order to make them more accessible, and people of higher expertise are taken to separate courts.

“We play shortcut matches which are [matches that are] not the entire court because they are probably not good enough to use the whole court yet,” said Shah.

Murarka and Shah started JuniorAces tennis in the summer of 2021 after their freshman year. Since then, they have seen growth in their classes as they have become more well known and experienced. A typical class is about eight to twelve kids.

“We had around sixty kids the first summer, and we had ninety kids the second summer. We’ll see how many we get this summer. Our coaches have also expanded as needed for this,” said Shah.

Murarka has also collaborated with other people at Amador in his business pursuits. Ultimately he started this business because of his great passion for the sport. 

“The inspiration behind that is I love playing tennis and my partner loves playing tennis and we just decided that we wanted to give back to the community and teach other people how to play,” said Murarka.

Working with kids has been an experience for Murarka, as the time dedicated to running the program has taught him lessons on the court.

“Teaching tennis has taught me that you have to be really patient, not even when you are just playing tennis, but when you are teaching tennis you have to be really patient with the kids and that kind of translates over to when you are playing. So, if you are losing you have to be patient with yourself to try to get back in the game,” said Murarka.