Greeley's Meng Manichanh may be 56 years old, but he moves around the tennis court with the ease of someone half his age.
Nobody knows that better than Greeley's Jeff Lejeune, his opponent Sunday at the Greeley Tennis Championships. The 33-year-old saw Manichanh run down nearly every ball and make seemingly every shot in his 6-0, 6-1 victory against Lejeune in the men's 3.5 singles quarterfinal round at Centennial Tennis Courts.
It was difficult on the weary legs of Lejeune, who had to be up before 3 a.m. the previous two days to work his job stocking shelves for the Frito-Lay potato chip company.
He didn't get to bed until 10 p.m. Saturday night and was up at 2:30 a.m. Sunday morning working before his match at 8 a.m.
"I meant to ask (Manichanh) yesterday if we could back the match up to 11 a.m. so I could get a nap in," Lejeune said.
Even rest may not have helped Lejeune, who was playing his first tournament at the 3.5 level. Manichanh was on his game, coming to the net at every opportunity and making his volleys count.
"He hit everything back and he wouldn't let me win my serve, even when I was trying really hard," Lejeune said.
Manichanh is used to doing a lot of running. He grew up playing soccer in grass fields with lots of rocks in his native country of Laos, the small communist state in southeast Asia bordering Vietnam, Cambodia and China.
"It helped with the running, but the skills (for tennis), I am not so sure," Manichanh said.
Growing up, his country didn't even have television until the late 1960s. Even then he had to go to the local store to watch important events like astronaut Neil Armstrong's historic first walk on the moon.
Manichanh's first exposure to tennis came as a child in Laos where he used to get paid a quarter a ball to track down errant shots as a ball boy for the wealthy players at the local country club. Rackets were too expensive, though, so he couldn't learn to play himself.
"But they gave me the ball, so I could take it home and play with it because tennis balls were expensive," Manichanh said.
He first came to the U.S. as a foreign exchange student when he was 17. Because of the law at the time, Manichanh had to go back to Laos for three years before he could come back to the U.S. In Laos, he was employed at the U.S. Embassy during the Vietnam War where he worked with a retired foreign service officer who was from Greeley.
He came back to the U.S. on a student visa to the University of Northern Colorado with the retired service officer, and when the communists took over his country, he applied for asylum because he loved the U.S. and couldn't return to his own country.
"And I have loved it ever since," Manichanh said.
It was in Greeley where Manichanh took his first tennis lessons more than 30 years ago at Aims Community College. At the time he was too busy to play, so he gave it up for about 15 years until his children Chris and Michelle, both tennis players at Greeley West High School, were older.
Now he plays as much as he can, constantly surprising his opponents with his quickness and agility around the court.
"They don't expect that I can run down the ball and come to the net," Manichanh said.
