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Sports
The Battalion
Mohamed Dakki leader in Tennis
Page 5 • Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Second Annual
LMLHnr ®W
weightlifting exhibition
By Kyle Davoust
THE BATTALION
Two weeks ago, Texas A&M
senior tennis player Mohamed
^ Dakki improved his singles record
1Csle I! to 13-1, earning him Big 12 Player
t01 “lof the Week honors as well as a
in the International Tennis
Association’s top-75 rankings — a
goal to which most collegiate ten
nis players aspire. Dakki’s road to
this position, however, has been
anything but conventional.
Simo, as friends and teammates
call Dakki, sta ted his collegiate
career five years ago at Western
Michigan University, where he
e i lcs ^established himself as the Broncos’
_. r player, winning Freshman of
the Year honors for the Mid
American Conference. All was
well for the Moroccan
Jnative, until he got news from
* tae that would signal the end of
his tenure at Western Michigan.
At a young age, Simo was
^iforced to deal with his father’s
, His mother was left to raise
^ him, his brother and his sister,
while maintaining the family busi
ness. The news from home was
lat his mother needed help that
ould ultimately come from Simo.
After helping his mother with
efamily business, Dakki planned
return to the United States to
continue his education. Daala
Ammar, a friend of Dakki’s and a
key Idoc al student at A&M, con
vinced him to reconsider playing
for the Aggies. He then took the
^ tyfinitiative and started e-mailing
head tennis coach Tim Cass,
had to start calling him
if because he’s so good with
the Internet." Cass said. “So much
our correspondence over that
time was simply through e-mail.”
After months of this correspon
dence with Cass, Simo was slated to
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play for the Aggies in spring 2002.
Sept. 11, 2001, changed those
plans.
“When 1 went to the American
Embassy in Paris (to re-obtain a
Visa), they told me that they had a
new procedure and that the FBI has
to search everything you do,”
Dakki said. “They told me it was
going to take four to seven weeks.”
Through a process that was sup
posed to take at most two months,
the events of Sept. 11 caused it to
take a little more than two years
for Simo to re-obtain his Visa,
effectively limiting his eligibility
at A&M.
“No one could predict
September Nth, and when that
happened the Visa situation really
tightened up,” Cass said. “His
country, Morocco, was one of the
countries that was closely scruti
nized, so it pretty much revamped
that whole process and held up his
entrance to the United States.”
NCAA rules stipulate that once
an athlete begins play, he or she
then has a five-year window of eli
gibility in which they are allowed
to compete. Because Simo started
his career back in 1999 with
Western Michigan, this is the last
semester he is eligible to play for
A&M. Sadly for the Aggies, his
first semester of playing tennis will
be his last.
“If I could have come here in
January of 2002, like I wanted to, I
would have had two years of eligi
bility,” Dakki said. “Now, I have
only this year to play.”
The refreshing part of this story
is that none of this seems to bother
Simo. The senior management
major made one thing clear: He is
here for education first.
“His attitude is amazing,” Cass
said. “I’m super-impressed with his
work ethic and his intensity, not
only on the tennis court, but in the
classroom as well.”
Wednesday, 7 p.m. to 8 p.m.
G. Rollie White Colliseum
Admission is free
Returning events:
• Bench press
• Squat
• Vertical jump
• Incline Press
Clean
New events
Aldo DeLa Garza will
max-on-reps with
225 pounds on bench
press
Slam dunk contest
Ruben DeLuna • THE BATTALION
John C. Livas • THE BATTALION
Former Big 1 2 player of the Week senior Mohamed Dakki is currently nationally ranked
Cass said he is so taken in by
Simo that he has offered him a job
as a student assistant next year,
which Dakki said he plans to take
when he finishes his degree.
“My whole goal in coming back
to the U.S. is to graduate and get my
degree,” Dakki said. “So that’s why
I came back even though I knew I
could only play one semester.”
Men’s Tennis
takes on LSU
By Kyle Davoust
THE BATTALION
Louisiana State University and Texas A&M are
not typical rivals. The two schools compete in dif
ferent conferences and have had no history of bat
tles on the football field — a must in these parts.
All of this, however, has not stopped them from
becoming major rivals in tennis.
“They’re one of our top four rivals, even though
they’re not in our conference,” said A&M coach
Tim Cass. “We’ve had a lot of huge matches with
them over the last eight years, and I look at this
year as being no different. Jhey’re (17th), and
we’re 13th in the rankings, so it looks like it should
be a pretty good matchup.”
The teams look to maintain their newfound
rivalry Wednesday as the No. 13 Aggies (11-4, 2-
0 Big 12) travel to Baton Rouge to take on the No.
17 Tigers (8-1, 1-1 SEC) at the Dub Robinson
Tennis Stadium.
LSU coach Jeff Brown said his team is always
ready to face the Aggies.
See Tennis on page 7
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