Tej Bhagra a tennis star and so much more

Jun. 20—True story: Tej Bhagra spends most of his days at home clutching and swinging his tennis racquet."It drives me nuts," his mother, Anjali, said with a warm smile.

"He's swinging that racquet all the time."He has swung it so much and with such confidence and skill, that Bhagra — an 18-year-old who graduated from Mayo High School earlier this month — has skyrocketed all the way to a No. 19 boys tennis ranking out of his 2026 graduating class, all tennis-playing members of the country combined.

That's rare air."He's the best player coming out of high school that I've ever coached," said one of his teaching professionals at the Rochester Athletic Club, Steve Tacl, in his 20th year at the club. "He's the highest-ranked player we've ever had."

He also might be the most diverse tennis player on record at the RAC. Bhagra, the younger brother of Ojas Bhagra, another former hyper-involved student/athlete at Mayo who went on to Vanderbilt University and is about to get started at Mayo Medical School, showed Tej the way.The younger brother took his example and ran with it.

Tej writes a monthly blog called "Finance Fingers," centered on economic trends and tendencies. This is the same guy who championed the Legislature to sponsor a bill that would make personal finance class mandatory in high school. He did that in his freshman year, and it worked.

Finance classes are now a mandatory part of the high school curriculum in Minnesota. This was after Tej and a teacher presented in front of the Minnesota House and Finance Committee, pushing the bill until it passed.Tej also writes a monthly column for the Post Bulletin, addressing an assortment of things that interest him.

His most recent one delved into how some of the most important work we do is not visible right away, or ever. That so much of life is built on delayed satisfaction and that we so often fail to recognize things until they are gone, such as our health.He is also a member of the Minnesota Youth Council as one of t