Ji Hoon Heo will start his bid for more ITF Junior ranking points early as he leaves for Australia next week.<\/p>\n
Heo was invited, anew to join the ITF Pacific Oceania Touring Team that will be competing in three tournaments Down Under. He earned another slot on the team after a runner-up finish in the 2008 Pacific Oceania Junior Championships in Fiji.<\/p>\n
Heo was coming off a stint in two tournaments in the Philippines early this month, but won only a couple of games there as he was still playing hurt.<\/p>\n
But with or without an injury, he will keep on playing to earn ranking points.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope to get more ranking points so I could get bring my ranking to a higher level. My injury still bothers me but it\u2019s getting better. The thing about ankle injuries is that it never really goes away,\u201d Heo said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s vulnerable and I really need to be careful so I still wear a brace when I\u2019m playing tennis,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
After playing in the Philippines, Heo took a weeklong break before resuming his preparations for the tournaments in Australia.<\/p>\n
He is training six times a week doing upper body and core workouts every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, Heo does leg workouts such as running, sprinting, and other drills.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m trying to get back in best shape. The problem in the Philippines was that I wasn\u2019t much in shape. I will try to solve these problems before I go to Australia. I really want to prepare for this trip because this is a great opportunity for me to get more ranking points,\u201d the Marianas High School student said.<\/p>\n
Beside the tournaments in Australia, Heo will also compete in Auckland, New Zealand in the last week of January.<\/p>\n
Joining tournaments in Australia and New Zealand will make the CNMI netter miss classes and he thanked MHS for allowing him to continue competing off island.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thanked MHS for being so supportive lately with my tennis. I hope they will continue to be supportive with my tennis career,\u201d Heo said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ji Hoon Heo will start his bid for more ITF Junior ranking points early as he leaves for Australia next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}