SBART Scholar Athlete of the Year: Masato Perera from Dream Cast Media Group on Vimeo.
Masato Perera’s athletic and academic credentials will make your head spin.
In his introduction of the San Marcos tennis star, Marc Gamberdella of the Santa Barbara Athletic Round Table said Masato has the “walk-off” qualities.
“All you have to say is CIF Champion and Harvard, and drop the mic,” he said. “Those are the realities of this young man.”
Perera has been honored as the Round Table’s Scholar Athlete of the Year for San Marcos.
He was presented the award in a virtual ceremony that included San Marcos Athletic Director Abe Jahadhmy, and was hosted by Gamberdella, whose Gamberdella-Spruill Group with Merrill Lynch Wealth Management sponsors the award.
Masato is the third child of parents Laxman and Keiko Perera to receive the prestigious honor, following brother Kento and sister Yuka, who also excelled in tennis at San Marcos and continued on to attend elite universities and play the sport — Kento at Stanford and Yuka at MIT.
Masato paid his dues playing against his older siblings.
“I started playing tennis at the age of 5,” he said. “I grew up following my older siblings’ footsteps as competitive tennis players. At the time, even though I hated that I was always losing to them, I dreamed to compete in the same ‘stages’ of high levels of competition as them.”
Masato has exceeded those levels as a high-schooler. Last season, he won the CIF-Southern Section singles title, the first ever in San Marcos history and the first won by an area player since 1993.
An even greater accomplishment was winning seven matches to capture a USTA Level 1 Nationals Boys 18s singles title in Indianapolis as the 22nd-seeded player.
“I enjoyed the process of overcoming top U.S. players and winning the tournament,” he said.
Other accomplishments include winning the Channel League singles title as a freshman, being named the Southern California High School Tennis MVP and High School All American. He is ranked top five nationally in the Boys 18s, is a blue-chip recruit and is headed to Harvard.
In the classroom, Masato carries a 4.88 GPA. His current courseload includes Advanced Placement English Literature, economics and government, Spanish 2, freehand drawing and an SBCC class in statistics.
He is a part of the Accelerated Academic Program for Leadership and Enrichment at San Marcos and has been a National Honor Society member since the 10th grade.
He hopes to pursue an engineering major in college.
“He’s everything you want your student athletes to be,” Jahadhmy said. “He takes responsibility. Adversity does not get in his way. He embraces challenges, so he wants to get better and better. He’s not afraid of it. He wants a challenge and wants to take on the best all of the time.”
Masato thanked his parents for their support and sacrifice in helping him achieve his success.
“I would not be here without their efforts,” he said.
He also gave a shoutout to his coaches and teammates.
“Especially the seniors,” he said, “for having my back these last three years and making these years so memorable.”