Michael Lesko

FRC Tennis Professional
Assistant Manager, Forever Tennis & Pickleball

Michael began playing tennis over two decades ago, and has been teaching for the last five years. Growing up in Columbia, IL, Michael played tennis at Gibault Catholic High School; the team MVP all four years and a three-star college recruit, he is a 2023 inductee to Gibault’s Athletic Hall of Fame.

Michael joined the NCAA Division II Quincy University Men’s Tennis Team in Quincy, IL where he played in the lineup all four years, often at line 1 in both singles and doubles. Among his awards from Quincy, Michael was the 2015 Men’s Tennis Freshman of the Year; in 2018, he was named Team Captain and the recipient of Quincy’s Hawk Award, honoring an athlete from each team for outstanding leadership and team commitment. He graduated from Quincy in 2018 with a B.A. in Marketing and a minor in Finance.

In addition to teaching tennis, Michael is Assistant Manager at Forever Tennis & Pickleball, our retail store, providing a wide range of goods and services to the St. Louis Metro racquet sports community. In 2018, Michael earned his Master Racquet Technician (“MRT”) certification from the US Racquet Stringers’ Association (“USRSA”), considered the most rigorous test of stringing knowledge and expertise.

Also through Forever Tennis, Michael serves as tournament director for virtually all FRC and Woodsmill Tennis Club (“WTC”) adult tourneys and manages the popular Night Owl ladder that he founded in 2019.

Through the ladder, Michael arranges weekly singles competition for players at FRC and WTC, which has grown to host approximately 80 players during the peak indoor season. In his tourney director role, Michael holds some USTA adult events and hosts the Night Owl Tournament Series; the Series’ monthly adult tourneys are non-USTA sanctioned events for players ranging from beginners to Open-level competitors.

While Michael diligently arranges adult competition for others, he still enjoys competing himself – individually in tournaments, but especially as part of a team. In the past two years of tourney competition, Michael has been the St. Louis District Men’s Open Doubles Champion (2020) and Mixed Doubles Open Champion (2021). As part of a World Team Tennis (“WTT”) team and a 4.5 Men’s USTA team in 2022, both teams finished their seasons at Nationals, having been champions at their respective Sectional levels. He has also captained or co-captained a USTA 5.0 Men’s team for the past three years.

FRC was especially proud when Michael was named USTA’s 2022 St. Louis Men’s Adult Player of the Year, which recognizes “an Adult player (4.5 and above) for his performance, current accomplishments, sportsmanship and the promotion of tennis in general, raising the standard of play to its highest level”.