By HUEY COUNTS JR.
Salina Journal
This is how good Jan Labas is at tennis: The 18-year-old has to go back several years to recall the last time he lost a match.
If things go as well as he hopes the next few days, the Salina South senior will be tacking four more checkmarks on his personal victory ledger.
Labas is an exchange student from Slovakia who has created a stir these past several weeks with his dominant performances for the Cougars.
Heading into the start of today's Class 5A state tennis championships in Wichita, Labas is 30-0 as South's No. 1 singles player. Not only has he won, he's been nearly untouchable.
His most competitive match of the season was an 8-5 victory against Manhattan's Gabe Nagy in mid-April.
"There were 40 mile per hour winds that day," says Labas, looking back to his match against his 6A opponent. "I had never played in such winds before. It was amazing, that made it quite a challenge for me.
"I had a lot of fun playing that guy. He was really pumped up to beat me and it kept me pumped up."
His victory helped the Cougars capture the team title of their own tennis invitational. For Labas, team success is a different concept. In Slovakia, high schools don't offer sports, he said, so athletes join independent clubs and compete as individuals.
"Every city has clubs," says Labas, whose home is in the Slovakian capital city of Bratislava, "and there are maybe 20 clubs in my city. You pay a yearly fee, and you play for yourself."
Labas started swinging a tennis racquet at age 6 under the tutelage of his mother, Marcela, a former Slovakian tennis champion. When he was about 10 she told him it was time to choose between tennis and karate, his other love.
"I figured tennis had a little better future," he says. "About that time I got a private coach."
For the next few years Labas put in the work of someone with a long-term goal of becoming a touring professional. He ate, slept and breathed tennis, playing 12 months a year, and quickly climbing the national age-group rankings of his country.
But his ascent came to a sudden halt when at age 14 he started having sharp pain in both his knees. There were times where he could barely walk up stairs let alone rush a net or work the baseline.
"I did a lot of rehab, but nothing seemed to work," he recalls. "My orthopedic (doctor) finally decided it was a growth thing and that I just had to rest. So I didn't play tennis for three years."
During his break from training, Labas developed an urge to visit the United States, so he signed up for an exchange program and was matched with a host family in Salina.
Labas originally anticipated that he would end up with a family in Florida or California, "so when I saw Kansas I thought, 'Oh my gosh, the middle of nowhere, flat lands, what am I going to do there?' I thought it would be boring.
"But it's really awesome here. The people are great, I wouldn't want to go anywhere else."
He arrived in Salina about two weeks into the school year and immediately tried to sign up for tennis since the pain in his legs finally had subsided. Labas was stunned to learn that in high school each sport has a "season."
"I didn't know that, I was used to playing year round," he says. "I had to choose something to do, I didn't want to just sit around so I chose something with conditioning and did soccer and swimming."
He also discovered something else, that he had a fellow countryman at South in Marek Zamecnik, another exchange student from Labas' hometown. Zamecnik can typically be found waving a Slovakian flag at matches in support of his new friend.
"He knows my classmates from home, I know his classmates, but we didn't meet until we were both here," Labas says. "He even knows my mom."
As unusual as school sports are to Labas, boys tennis headlines are out of the ordinary for South, which typically plays in the shadow of Salina Central. With his methodical yet aggressive style, he has helped boost the confidence of his Cougar teammates.
"He's been a good influence on the kids from a tennis point of view," says David Stueve, South's coach. "He is able to show his skills as a tennis player and show that it takes a lot of hard work to get to that level.
"And he is able to share stories about his culture, so from an educational point of view it's been an enrichment for my team as well."
One of the first things Stueve noticed about Labas was his quickness and hand-eye coordination. Labas combines the two into an uncanny ability to place the ball wherever he wants on the court. Overall, he has a complete game.
"He came to us with all the skills," says his coach. "Our goal as coaches was to continue building on that. We didn't have anybody to spar with him, to push him, but we could polish his skills, work on his concentration and focus, those type things."
To claim the 5A singles title, Labas, who hopes to eventually earn a tennis scholarship to play for an American college, must win four matches.
"I told my mom, and she's proud of me and pretty excited too," he says. "In Europe I'm not famous or anything, so I'm kind of enjoying my little bit of fame here."
©Salina Journal