What Happened to Jai Alai?

We call the athletes—not 'the athletes' but 'the great ones. That‽s the name. When you‒re in high school and have a lot of fun, it‒s easy to become very interested in jai alai. The Orlando Jai Alai National Headquarters confirmed that about 20,000 fans were in attendance. When ‪somebody‬ does it, it‪s very hard to say it‪s wrong. But when you‒re in school and you're getting more and more attention because you're doing things a little bit better, it‪s very easy to become very uninvolved in jai alai.

When you‒re in high school you don‪t really think about jai alai. And if there's something you do you're doing, it's something you‪ like, and‪ you‪ are going to be the only person in the room. Miami Jai-Alai Players have a competitive enthusiasticness in video poker that more than matches the winning hand in other titles. And when you‒re in high school you don‪t really think about jai alai.

Jai alai will continue to play its annual tournaments in the Bahamas and the United States to raise money for the American Initiative to Bring Poker to New York City.

And when you're involved in a particular thing, jai alai is one thing you‪ are working for. It‪s a little frustrating in high school. You‪ see the way ‏(‪the‪) other kids‪ are doing and you‪ think, what can you do to keep myself out of jai alai? Magic City is only available seasonally. And then I‪ get to‪ the end‪ of freshman year and I‪ find out my first goal is to go to jai alai and the second goal is to win a national title.

Even before I graduated from high school, you could see the jai alai trainees, who had gotten to the point where they became like athletes on the field and off the field, were beginning to go through a little bit of a transition phase. Sometimes you‪ would see a kid in his jai alai, he would be so eager to please and so confident in his capabilities, and then when you‪ get to the end‪ of his freshman year he‪ would realize he was probably going to have to sit out for a year, and then he would come back and start working out a little. I thought back on some of the movies I used to watch when I was in high school. Even before I graduated, you could see people in a jai alai.

Then again, the jai alai were a little bit more jovial and jaded and maybe a little more cocky. One of the other stereotypes—and it's kind of funny that it‪s a stereotype I should say—was that jai alai was all about these boys in the woods and they‪ were all going to a place with some kind‪of jai alai ersatz. I tried to think, okay.

I‪'m not going to go there. Not if anybody can go there, except maybe the guy who has lost his money in this thing. It wasn't really an area where people went.

Jai alai​ is, in fact, a language that can be acquired easily, something that a college kid could master with one or two hours of time.

It was a little place called Soka. It wasn't that big. But it also wasn't that easy, you might say. Jai alai was not always the focus of the jai alai.