Comments (0) Best Up-and-Coming Athlete - 2010
Sachia Vickery
When she was 5, Sachia Vickery plucked a cheap tennis racket off the shelf of a Miramar shop and told her mother that she'd be the next Venus Williams. A decade has passed and Vickery, now 15, is on track to make good on that improbable promise. The former top-ranked 12-year-old in the nation, Vickery rarely plays against an opponent her own age. Last year at 14, she won a major international tournament in the Czech Republic, then turned pro. This year, she made a dazzling debut at New York City's Madison Square Garden, knocking off an older player in an exhibition match. It will be a long climb from her current world ranking (975), but Vickery's got time on her side, as well as a mother who worked two jobs to pay for expensive tennis lessons, like the ones Vickery's getting now at an academy in France. It won't be long now before that investment begins paying handsome dividends.
