To say that Kale Dal­la Cos­ta lives, breathes and sleeps ten­nis and is pas­sion­ate about the sport is an un­der­state­ment.

His bed­room's walls are cov­ered with posters of his ten­nis idols like Roger Fed­er­er, Rafael Nadal and No­vak Djokovic, old rack­ets from the 80s are on dis­play, as well as his tro­phy shelf and pho­tographs of him­self in tour­na­ments.

Kale trains six days a week at the Ten­nis Pa­trons Acad­e­my (TPA) at the Trinidad Coun­try Club and al­so with the T&T na­tion­al ten­nis team at the Na­tion­al Rac­quet Cen­tre in Tacarigua on Sat­ur­days and Sun­days. His moth­er, Nico­la "Bil­ly" Dal­la Cos­ta, usu­al­ly drops him off.

He al­so does strength and con­di­tion­ing twice a week with Move­ment Me­chan­ics in Mar­aval and sees a sports psy­chol­o­gist every oth­er week.

He turned 11 in No­vem­ber last year and at ten he be­came the na­tion­al un­der 12 cham­pi­on. He won four out of sev­en re­gion­al un­der 12 tour­na­ments, mak­ing him the re­gion­al un­der 12 cham­pi­on.

Two days af­ter the Stan­dard Five St An­drew's Pri­ma­ry School A-stu­dent writes his SEA on April 2, he will be par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Trin­i­ty Cup and The Catch Na­tion­al Ju­nior Ten­nis Cham­pi­onships.

The south­paw went to Evert Ten­nis Acad­e­my in Flori­da to train for a week, and he just re­turned from Bar­ba­dos over the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od for five days of train­ing. He al­so com­pet­ed in An­tigua and St Lu­cia.

Kyle said when he was five, his par­ents need­ed a sum­mer camp for him to go to that was near to where they worked. He said he want­ed to do a sport­ing camp and since they knew the own­er of TPA, they de­cid­ed to send him there.

"I would like to trav­el so that I can get to play dif­fer­ent peo­ple and com­pete in dif­fer­ent coun­tries so I can earn points to get high­er up in the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Ten­nis Con­fed­er­a­tion (COTECC) and in­ter­na­tion­al rank­ings.

"I had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do tri­als to rep­re­sent the coun­try in the world ju­niors un­der 14 last year, but I was too young, on­ly turn­ing 11 in No­vem­ber.

"One of the biggest chal­lenges I have is play­ing against old­er chil­dren who are big­ger and stronger than me and I re­al­ly have to train hard­er to beat them."

He said an­oth­er chal­lenge was that cer­tain equip­ment was ex­pen­sive—his rack­et cost US $120, he had three in case one broke dur­ing a tour­na­ment and al­so car­ried an ex­tra reel of string.

Kale said the main ex­pens­es were for trav­el­ling, plane tick­ets, ho­tels, and sign­ing up for tour­na­ments.

He said his favourite movies were the Avengers and Ju­man­ji se­quels and he en­joyed play­ing PUBG Mo­bile with his fa­ther, Louis Dal­la Cos­ta.

Kale said his favourite food was roti, math­e­mat­ics was his favourite sub­ject, and his school of choice was Fa­ti­ma Col­lege.

He said he would love to rep­re­sent T&T at the Olympics in ten­nis.

Kale con­tin­ues to train at the acad­e­my un­der Neil Lin­go.

He achieved a na­tion­al rank­ing of one in the U12 cat­e­go­ry at the age of ten years and has con­tin­ued his ex­cel­lence in the U14 di­vi­sion where he is cur­rent­ly ranked eighth.

What his mom says:

Kale's moth­er said on the sec­ond day she went to pick him up at ten­nis camp, Coach Jean Mer­ry told her that he was good and asked if he played be­fore. She said he had nev­er picked up a rack­et pri­or to the camp.

She said they asked Kale to play in his first tour­na­ment five days af­ter, and al­though he didn't win, the ex­pe­ri­ence was in­valu­able. Nico­la said he re­turned one year lat­er and won in his cat­e­go­ry, nat­ur­al abil­i­ty helped a lot but he was very ded­i­cat­ed to his pas­sion.

Nico­la said she did want him to stop play­ing ten­nis, there was so much stress al­ready from SEA that he need­ed to be able to fin­ish his home­work and just re­lax af­ter.

She said as long as Kale kept study­ing and main­tained his grades, achiev­ing a good bal­ance, he can con­tin­ue in the sport he loved.

What his dad says:

Louis Dal­la Cos­ta said he was his son's biggest fan, he tru­ly be­lieved that he had a le­git­i­mate fu­ture in ten­nis, pos­sess­ing pas­sion, de­ter­mi­na­tion and dri­ve, and that he had a se­ri­ous shot in mak­ing it in the ten­nis world.

He said Kale was very an­a­lyt­i­cal and it showed on the court with his strat­e­gy.

Dal­la Cos­ta said Kale would like to go Wim­ble­don and be the first Trinida­di­an or Caribbean play­er to make it that far.

He said an­oth­er ma­jor chal­lenge was spon­sor­ship to off­set some of the ex­pens­es, a pro­fes­sion­al rack­et cost US$200-$300 and Kale went through ten pairs of sneak­ers a year.