March 11, 2015

By Lexi Shurilla, fightingillini.com staff writer | @SusanAlexisS

Imagine learning to play tennis when you're three years old. Now imagine having your brother as your best friend and training partner growing up, only to decide to go to the same school to build your tennis skills in hopes of winning a national championship and turning pro after you graduate; both of you. That seems like a dream come true for the Hiltzik family who spends most of their time together on the tennis court. But it's also completely feasible with the talented brothers, junior Jared and freshman Aron, back on the same team, this time in Orange & Blue.

Mother Knows Best

Jared Hiltzik started playing tennis when he was two years old. The sport was already a big part of his family as his mother was good friends with tennis great Billie Jean King and she got her sons into the sport when they were both very young. Two years younger than Jared, Aron picked right up where Jared left off and started playing tennis at three thanks to coaching from mom. The brothers played every sport together growing up - soccer, baseball, basketball, you name it - but the natural athletes both fell in love with tennis right away.

Growing up, Jared said that he thought it was healthy for his family to be so involved in the same sport, but it also had its challenges with going through coaches and different clubs and memberships; tennis was an expensive sport for two boys to play. While Jared had a solid career at New Trier High School, Aron actually didn't play much tennis in Winnetka, Illinois. He was mostly focused on playing in national tournaments and professional events, and only played his freshman year on the school team.

Sweet Home Champaign

The main goal for both of the Hiltzik brothers is to one day play professionally and that's the biggest reason why they chose to come to the University of Illinois. Illinois has produced quite the repertoire of pros, including Kevin Anderson and Amer Deliæ. While Aron credits learning most of his tennis skills from watching Novak Djokovic, and Jared's role model is Gilles Simon, Anderson is someone both of them look up to.

Jared was the first one to decide that Illinois was the place to be for college tennis. He liked that his parents wouldn't be too far away and it was somewhere where tennis was thriving. With Jared in Champaign, Aron was able to come down whenever he wanted to see his brother and hit around with the team. After his visits, he noted that it was obvious how much Illinois was improving older brother Jared's skills, so when it was time for Aron to decide his tennis future, he took his brother's lead.

"Jared is interesting," head coach Brad Dancer said. "Both boys were students of a former player of ours, Billy Heiser, and Billy kind of told me where he thought they were. I loved Jared the first time I saw him. I felt that he was a great athlete and his ranking was very low. He was not highly sought after or recruited. I just thought he was a great kid and he had a good passion for life. So we recruited him.

"Aron was very close with Jared growing up and I think that was natural for him to want to be a part of what we're building here. And we also saw Aron as a guy who could continue to elevate the program to a higher level. I think he sees himself that way, which is the way you want your incoming student-athletes to see, that they are going to be guys who change and elevate the program."

"There are a lot of reasons I picked Illinois, but when Jared committed here I was like, 'I'm not sure if I want to go to the same school as him,'" Aron said. "But I just saw him improve so much ever since he committed and I wanted to be an Illini. The coaches are great, the team's amazing, the academics are great and I love the school."

There is more pressure now at the collegiate level, but Aron believes he has the potential to make it as a one of the top tennis players on the professional circuit and has high hopes for his time at Illinois. Midway through his freshman year, Aron has already noticed an improvement in his game since he arrived on campus.

"They're both great athletes and love the sport," Dancer said. "They get a joy out of being out on the practice court and out playing matches. They've had a family environment that plants big dreams in their heads so they've seen that position for themselves in the future. I think they see themselves as highly successful individuals. So you take those components that they're athletic, they love the game and they see themselves as being successful people and those are great components to start to build a professional foundation."

Aron vs. Jared

Jared has already made a name for himself at Illinois. The 2014 All-American was named First-Team All-Big Ten as a sophomore and finished last year ranked 12th nationally in singles, and both of the brothers were ranked first in the nation by TennisRecruiting.net coming out of high school during their senior years.

This season, Jared is off to an undefeated (12-0) start to the dual season, playing the majority of his matches at Illinois' No. 2 singles. Aron has seen action in singles on courts 2-5 and is off to an 8-3 start in the dual season.

Even though they're brothers, they each have their own unique style. Their Illinois coaches understand that each of them have their own ways of handling things and different ways of playing the game. So it's important to know how to approach coaching each of them separately, but also special to have two brothers on the team.

"I'm a good problem solver on the court," Jared said. "I view the court differently than some other players and I compete really hard. I could get better with my transition play as well as leadership. I'm not the most vocal guy out there. I try to show my leadership skills more through action.

"I think we're complete opposites out there. It's kind of funny. We're both really super competitive but we're competitive in our own little ways. I'm more of a strategic competitor that tries to figure out little things and he's kind of, 'Let's just do this, let's just do that,' but we're both pretty competitive."

Right now the Hiltziks are on a good path and a part of a very good Illinois tennis team that currently ranks No. 4 in the nation. Aron admits that his brother is probably the better of the two at the moment, but he hopes that one day he can beat Jared out on the court.

"I think I'm 3-0 against him in tournament play, which is pretty good," Jared said with a laugh.

"They are two different animals," Dancer said. "They love one another a lot but their personalities are so divergent in terms of what they do. You have to coach Jared entirely different than you coach Aron. I think it's part of the fun of coaching is that mix and balance of how to coach each of them."

Bond of Brothers

High school was Jared and Aron's first experience being on the same team. Now on the same roster again, having a pair of brothers on his team is a first for Dancer and he said it will be fun to watch it play out. One of the thoughts when Aron arrived at Illinois was the possibility of playing them as a doubles team. Both Jared and Aron agreed that it would be pretty fun to be a brother's tandem team, since they've only played in a couple tournaments together when they were younger.

"We hate to put expectations or any other sort of parameters of what we think they can do on our guys, and now that we have the brothers it's something we're really careful about," Dancer said. "We don't want to set one level of expectations for Aron or Jared and then vice versa, have a lower set for the other guy. I think the biggest thing is, we believe in both of them as competitors. They're going to get their playing time. They're going to get their opportunities and then what they make of that is going to be their end result."

"I know I was always a leader for him at home, but it was kind of cool to be on the court with him every day and taking him to school then going to practice in high school, and now it's pretty much the same thing," Jared said. "I'm kind of letting him do his own thing a little bit more in college, getting acclimated to the environment here, but once we get back on the tennis court it's back to the same thing."

The transition to his new team wasn't hard at all for Aron. He's known his brother's teammates well before they were his own. Even though he now has a whole roster full of brothers, Jared is still his go-to if he ever needs to ask for anything. Aron welcomes his brother's constructive criticism, because he knows Jared is only trying to make him better; Dancer would like to see even more coaching coming from the big brother as their careers at Illinois continue.

"I think that it's really big for me just because I'm trying to be such a good role model for him," Jared said. "I can't act off in practice anymore because I know that he really looks up to me, so I feel like it's made me much more disciplined on the court. I know I have something else to lose now, which is him."

It's no surprise that they have their fair share of normal brother things they've had to work through, but it's also clear they have a very special bond and being a good brother is just as important as being a good tennis player.